Skip to content
ontologydriven
Sign out

Dictionary

Words, grammatical forms and meanings linked to the ontology.

twenty winks en · NOUN

Pronunciation

Etymology

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).

Meanings

  1. (idiomatic, plural, plural-only) A very short sleep.
    • Twenty winks [title] 2004 November 10, Annalisa Barbieri, “Twenty winks”, in The Guardian:
    • Near-synonyms: forty winks; see also Thesaurus:shut-eye
    • All right, go along to the doting mother, while I stretch out on the settle and chance twenty winks of sleep before Andrew turns up. I never sleep well on the train, as you know. 1931, Henry Berman, Life Demands! And Other Plays:
    • Twenty winks offered to drivers 2003 November 3, “Twenty winks offered to drivers”, in BBC.co.uk:

Synonyms

cark · doss · rest · shut-eye · forty winks · sleep