Forty winks

 

Forty winks

When the sun beats down relentlessly, the senses become befuddled and concentration is increasingly difficult. Perhaps that is the time to stop battling the urge to close your eyes, allow the lids to droop and have forty winks.

This common English idiom was first recorded in 1821 by William Kitchiner (1778-1827) who advocated a short sleep in daytime for good mental and physical health. William Kitchiner was known as ‘a celebrity chef.’

Why is it ‘forty’ winks rather than twenty-one or seventy-five, or any other random number? The number forty has often been used to indicate a vague but substantial period, or an extensive set of things or events in folklore. In the Bible, Moses spends forty days on the mountain, the rains fall for forty days and forty nights in the Great Flood, Christ endured forty days in the wilderness. In The Arabian Nights, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves tells the story of an honest poor man who uncovers a thieves’ treasure den. From that story comes the phrase, ‘open sesame.’

A ‘wink’ is a fleeting closing of the eyes. It may be deliberate; a wink can be a hidden message between two people, or an indication of a joke, or a flirtation, but in the context of ‘forty winks’ it means not a constant blinking but a ‘resting of the eyes’ as some like to express it. In other words, it is a brief, restorative sleep.

Some people consciously choose to have forty winks. I worked with someone who daily had forty winks in the lunch break. I may be wrong (frequently am!) but it seems to me that men are more inclined than women to take forty winks.