Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for May 20, 2012 is:

hypnagogic • \hip-nuh-GAH-jik\  • adjective
: of, relating to, or occurring in the period of drowsiness immediately preceding sleep

Examples:
"People who play lots of computer games sometimes experience 'screen dreams' as they fall asleep, in which they see vivid images of the game they have been playing. These screen dreams are also products of the hypnagogic state." — From Paul Martin's Counting Sheep, 2002

"These hallucinations, called hypnagogic hallucinations, may occur when falling quickly into REM sleep, as you do when you first fall asleep, or upon waking." — From an article by Jeff Barnet in the Las Cruces Sun-News, January 11, 2011

Did you know?
"The hypnagogic state is that heady lull between wakefulness and sleep when thoughts and images flutter, melt, and transform into wild things," wrote Boston Globe correspondent Cate McQuaid (October 1, 1998). Some scientists have attributed alien-abduction stories to this state, but for most people these "half-dreams" are entirely innocuous. Perhaps the most famous hypnagogic dream is that of the German chemist Friedrich August Kekule von Stradonitz, who was inspired with the concept of the benzene ring by a vision of a snake biting its own tail. You're not dreaming if the Greek root "hypn-," meaning "sleep," seems familiar — you've seen it in "hypnotize." The root "-agogic" is from the Greek "-agōgos," meaning "inducing," from "agein" meaning "to lead." We borrowed "hypnagogic" (also spelled "hypnogogic") from French "hypnagogique" in the late 19th century.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for May 19, 2012 is:

shanghai • \shang-HYE\  • verb
1 a : to put aboard a ship by force often with the help of liquor or a drug b : to put by force or threat of force into or as if into a place of detention 2 : to put by trickery into an undesirable position

Examples:
Nick was shanghaied by Erika into helping out at the charity fundraiser after her first volunteer bailed out.

"In time, the new novel, lurching around his psyche, dragged itself away and became real. How I loved to see him shanghaied like that, careening down the rum-soaked wharves of imagination, where any roustabout idea might turn to honest labor." — From Diane Ackerman's 2011 book One Hundred Names for Love: A Memoir

Did you know?
In the 1800s, long sea voyages were very difficult and dangerous, so people were understandably hesitant to become sailors. But sea captains and shipping companies needed crews to sail their ships, so they gathered sailors any way they could — even if that meant resorting to kidnapping by physical force or with the help of liquor or drugs. The word "shanghai" comes from the name of the Chinese city of Shanghai. People started to use the city's name for that unscrupulous way of obtaining sailors because the East was often a destination of ships that had kidnapped men onboard as crew.