Meanings
- idiomaticpluralplural onlyA very short sleep.
Near-synonyms: forty winks; see also Thesaurus:shut-eye
3 more examples
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 PlaysTwenty winks offered to drivers
2003 November 3, “Twenty winks offered to drivers”, in BBC.co.ukTwenty winks [title]
2004 November 10, Annalisa Barbieri, “Twenty winks”, in The Guardian
Synonyms & antonyms
Origin
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).
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
twenty winks. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/twenty%20winks
“twenty winks.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/twenty%20winks. Accessed November 4, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “twenty winks,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/twenty%20winks.
Source: twenty winks on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.