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Words, grammatical forms and meanings linked to the ontology.

biphasic sleep en · NOUN

Meanings

  1. (uncountable) The practice of sleeping twice per night, interrupted by a period of wakefulness; common in the days before electric lighting during the season with longer night.
    • Beginning in the 1700s, the industrial revolution—its light, its caffeine, its clocks, and above all, its work schedules—took Europe’s biphasic sleep in its hairy arms and mushed the two phases together. 2022 January 27, Derek Thompson, “Can Medieval Sleeping Habits Fix America’s Insomnia?”, in The Atlantic:
  2. (uncountable) The practice of taking a regular nap during the afternoon and sleeping fewer hours at night.