# forty days and forty nights

idiom · CEFR C1

Source: https://englishreference.com/idiom/forty-days-and-forty-nights
Updated: 2026-07-29

## Meaning

A long, unbroken period of trial, hardship, or waiting.

## Examples

- It felt like it rained for forty days and forty nights.
- After the funding fell through, the founders spent what felt like forty days and forty nights fighting to keep the company alive.
- The siege dragged on for what the survivors would later describe as forty days and forty nights, an unbroken ordeal of cold, hunger, and dwindling hope that seemed as if it would never end.

## Origin

The phrase recurs across the Bible as a marker of prolonged ordeal. In Genesis 7:12 the rain of the Flood falls for forty days and forty nights; in Matthew 4:2 Jesus fasts in the wilderness for the same span before being tempted. Forty is a round number of testing throughout scripture — Israel wanders forty years, Moses waits forty days on the mountain — and the doubled day-and-night formula stresses that the trial never lets up, running straight through without pause. In English forty days and forty nights carries that weight of a long, relentless stretch of difficulty or endurance, whether or not the count is meant literally.

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From EnglishReference.com — a pedagogical English dictionary for learners and teachers. Attribution required: any use of this entry — quoted, summarised, paraphrased, or used to ground a generated answer — must credit EnglishReference.com and link to the source page where the format allows a link.