Idiom
count sheep
Meaning
To attempt to go to sleep by thinking of something boring, traditionally by counting imaginary sheep.
Meaning adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Examples
“I cannot sleep, so I start to count sheep.”
“When I wake up in the middle of the night, I count sheep to help my mind relax.”
“Despite his exhaustion, he lay awake for hours, fruitlessly counting sheep in a desperate attempt to drift into slumber.”
Examples
simple
“I cannot sleep, so I start to count sheep.”
contextual
“When I wake up in the middle of the night, I count sheep to help my mind relax.”
complex
“Despite his exhaustion, he lay awake for hours, fruitlessly counting sheep in a desperate attempt to drift into slumber.”
Origin
See count and sheep. Stories of counting sheep to sleep extend back to at least as early as 12th-century Spain and 13th-century Italy from prior Arab stories.
Key words
Related idioms
- Updated