Idiom
sleep camel
Meaning
A person who habitually does with little to no sleep during the week and then makes up by sleeping a lot during the weekend.
Meaning adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Examples
“He is a sleep camel who rests only on the weekend.”
“Because she works long shifts all week, she acts like a sleep camel and stays in bed until Sunday afternoon.”
“My roommate is a total sleep camel, staying up until dawn for his tech job and then refusing to leave his room for the entire duration of the weekend.”
“The exhausted student lived like a sleep camel, surviving on caffeine during the week before collapsing into a deep slumber throughout the entire weekend.”
Examples
simple
“He is a sleep camel who rests only on the weekend.”
contextual
“Because she works long shifts all week, she acts like a sleep camel and stays in bed until Sunday afternoon.”
“My roommate is a total sleep camel, staying up until dawn for his tech job and then refusing to leave his room for the entire duration of the weekend.”
complex
“The exhausted student lived like a sleep camel, surviving on caffeine during the week before collapsing into a deep slumber throughout the entire weekend.”
Origin
The term is likely formed by analogy, comparing the human capacity for sleep to the dromedary habit of storing water for future use. The phrase suggests a metabolic efficiency the camel does not actually possess, though the popular imagery of the animal's humps has sustained the comparison. It remains a colloquial construction of uncertain date, relying on the folk-biological premise that rest, like hydration, may be stockpiled in advance of a period of deprivation.
Key words
Related idioms
- Updated