Sleeping at work

You wanted different ways to talk about sleeping – You got it!

We all have to sleep. Doctors generally advise 9 hours a day but it’s not always possible. When you work long hours, you may only get 5 or 6. Extremely busy people sometimes ‘pull an all-nighter’ where they don’t sleep at all. Then they try to catch up on lost sleep later on.

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Light sleep
This is where any noise will wake you up. You may hear people say “I’m a light sleeper so please be quiet”
Heavy sleep
This is where you are completely asleep and ‘dead to the world’. A person may say that “I’m a heavy sleeper so I’d even sleep through an earthquake”.

English speakers use numerous ways to talk about going to sleep. Have a look at these:

To doze off
to nod off
to drop off

These all mean to fall asleep but are also used to refer to when someone is sitting down and is very tired. They probably don’t want to sleep but you’ll hear something comment that “he just dozed off on his chair”.

To get some shut-eye

To hit the sack

To hit the hay

To grab some z’s

To turn in
All of these mean ‘to go to sleep’. So, tonight you can tell your family you are going to do any of the above before you say good night.

If you don’t have time for a proper sleep then you can have a nap. You could also call it:

A catnap

A power nap

Instead of saying “I’m going for a nap” you could try:
I’m going to have a snooze

I’m going to catch forty winks

Another alternative that is popular is:

I’m going to lay down for 5 minutes.
If you decide to have a nap at school or work and you get caught then say:
I was just resting my eyes

If you nap at work this is called:

Sleeping on the job

Posted by Phil Wade on Dec 4 2012. Filed under Vocabulary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry