twenty winks
twenty winks · twenty winkses
A very short sleepA very short sleep.
Meaning
1 senses(idiomatic, plural, plural only)A very short sleep.
Near-synonyms: forty winks; see also Thesaurus:shut-eye
Origin
Modeled after forty winks, from the humorous notion that if a short nap is forty winks theModeled 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).
Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0 · source
Dictionary text adapted from Wiktionary (Wiktionary contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0) and Open English WordNet / Princeton WordNet (CC BY 4.0, WordNet License); shared under CC BY-SA 4.0. Example sentences and recordings are credited where they appear.