John awoke from a fitful sleep.fitfulfit‧ful /ˈfɪtfəl/ adjective 
John awoke from a fitful sleep. The peace talks only seem to be making fitful progress.—fitfully adverb: She slept fitfully.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER DICTIONARIES
- He finally fell into a fitful sleep.
- Encased in iron lungs, tortured victims vainly chased slumber through long, fitful nights.
- He enters his home and passes a fitful night.
- It smeared the faces of the men in the room, fighting a losing, fitful battle with the shadows.
- It wasn't until dawn that she finally drifted off into an all too brief and fitful sleep.
- They passed into the fitful darkness of the dock cavern.
- You can not, in a post-industrial nation, make more than fitful sense of an early Victorian doctrine of class-war.
COLLOCATIONS FROM THE ENTRY John awoke from a fitful sleep.COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
not regular, and starting and stopping often: John awoke from a fitful sleep. (=in which you keep moving or waking)· My alarm woke me from a fitful sleep.
COLLOCATIONS FROM THE CORPUSNOUN· It wasn't until dawn that she finally drifted off into an all too brief and fitful sleep.· Thunder woke her out of a fitful sleep.
John awoke from a fitful sleep. The peace talks only seem to be making fitful progress.—fitfully adverb: She slept fitfully.