forty winks

1. 1.

   sleeping for a short period of time (usually not in bed)

   Synonymsnapcatnaplight sleepshort sleepsnooze

   Broadersleeping

   Narrowersiestazizz

   colloquialism

Questions about forty winks

What does forty winks mean?

forty winks means "sleeping for a short period of time (usually not in bed)".

What is another word for forty winks?

Close synonyms include nap, catnap, light sleep, short sleep, snooze. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is forty winks a common word?

forty winks is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.