Idiom
twenty winks
Meaning
A very short sleep, half as long as forty winks.
Meaning adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Examples
“I am tired and need twenty winks.”
“The long drive made me sleepy, so I pulled over to take twenty winks before continuing.”
“Exhausted from the long journey, the traveler found a quiet corner in the station to steal twenty winks before the final train arrived.”
Examples
simple
“I am tired and need twenty winks.”
contextual
“The long drive made me sleepy, so I pulled over to take twenty winks before continuing.”
complex
“Exhausted from the long journey, the traveler found a quiet corner in the station to steal twenty winks before the final train arrived.”
Origin
Modeled after forty winks, from the humorous notion that if a short nap is forty winks then a very short nap is twenty winks (half that amount).
Key words
Related idioms
- Updated