Idiom
beauty sleep
Meaning
Originally, sleep taken before midnight, on the belief that early sleep hours conduce to beauty and health; now (chiefly humorous), sleep at any time needed by one to stay beautiful; (countable) an instance of such sleep.
Meaning adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Examples
“I need some beauty sleep before my big day tomorrow.”
“Please be quiet because my sister is getting her beauty sleep right now.”
“After working late all week, I am going to bed early to catch up on my beauty sleep.”
“He jokes that he needs at least ten hours of beauty sleep to look that good in his morning meetings.”
“The actor refused to start the interview until he had finished his beauty sleep following the long flight.”
“She excused herself from the party early, claiming she required a generous amount of beauty sleep to recover from the week's exhaustion.”
Examples
simple
“I need some beauty sleep before my big day tomorrow.”
“Please be quiet because my sister is getting her beauty sleep right now.”
contextual
“After working late all week, I am going to bed early to catch up on my beauty sleep.”
“He jokes that he needs at least ten hours of beauty sleep to look that good in his morning meetings.”
“The actor refused to start the interview until he had finished his beauty sleep following the long flight.”
complex
“She excused herself from the party early, claiming she required a generous amount of beauty sleep to recover from the week's exhaustion.”
Origin
Formed from the compound of the nouns beauty and sleep, the term has been present in English since at least the mid-19th century. Early usage suggested that sleep taken before midnight was uniquely beneficial for one's appearance, a theory that prioritised the clock over the quality of the rest.
Key words
Related idioms
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