driftline
/ˈdrɪftˌlaɪn/nounVerified NewAlso in: Einschlafküste (Deutsch) · derivalitoral (Español) · dérivecôte (Français)
The line where waking drifts into sleep — the shore of the night, crossed without noticing.
The driftline is the boundary nobody can find in retrospect: the last thought that was a thought, the first image that was an image. It is crossed every night and remembered never; the sleep scientist can measure it, but the sleeper can only report that the shore was there, and then it was not.
Etym. — drift + line — the shoreline metaphor for the sleep-onset boundary; a drift line is exactly the mark left by what the water carried in.
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