14 English expressions about SLEEP

I’m going to teach you about one of my favourite activities – sleep! I will teach you some of the most common expressions about sleep, such as ’toss and turn’, ’hit the sack’, ’get some shuteye’, ’sleep in’, and many more. You will learn how to talk about sleeping well and sleeping poorly. Watch this video and take our practice quiz at to make sure you’ve mastered these expressions. You don’t need to sleep on it! TRANSCRIPT Hi, there. My name is Teacher Emma, and in today’s lesson, I am going to teach you about sleep expressions. One of my favourite activities is sleeping, and so for me, these expressions are very important because I do so much sleeping. So I’m going to first teach you some expressions that have to do with when you get a good night’s sleep and you’re happy in the morning, I’m going to teach you some expressions for when you get a bad night’s sleep and you wake up looking like this, and then I’m going to teach you some common expressions that just have to do with sleep in general. So let’s get started. The first expression I want to teach you is referring to a good sleep, and it’s when you are “out like a light“. Okay? This is when you go to bed, and [snaps], right away, you’re asleep. It’s very easy to fall asleep; you have no trouble falling asleep. As soon as you get into the bed, you fall asleep, that means you are “out like a light“. So let me give you an example. After I exercise, after I go to the gym, I’m very tired. As soon as I get into my bed, I am out like a light Okay? Now, this expression, you need to say the whole thing. It’s an expression that you need to use the whole thing for. Okay? The next expression I want to teach you: “sleep like a log“. I’m not the best artist, but this picture I’ve drawn. This is a log. So a log, if you can’t really tell what this is, I guess it kind of looks like a battery, but actually this is part of a tree. So when you have a part of a tree, like you cut wood, you get something like this. This is what we call a log. So if you sleep like a log, it means you sleep like this. Nothing can wake you. You’re so sleepy, you’re fast asleep, nothing will wake you up. So it means you’ve had a good night sleep. Last night, I was so comfortable. I slept like a log. Okay? The next expression I want to teach you: “sleep like a baby“. So, “sleep like a baby“ and “sleep like a log“ have the exact same meaning. It means you have a great night sleep. You have no trouble sleeping. Your sleep is perfect. So, I sleep like a baby every night. It means I have a very peaceful sleep. This expression is kind of a little bit strange, though, because if you think about babies, I don’t really think about them having great night sleeps. I usually think of babies crying all night long. But in this case, “sleep like a baby“, it’s a good thing. Finally, the last good sleep expression I want to teach you is to “be a deep sleeper“. If you are a deep sleeper, again, this means that you don’t wake up during the night. You’re very fast asleep. You’re in a very deep sleep, which means you have a very good sleep. Okay? When we add... Okay. When we add “er“ to a word, this means person. So if you are a good sleeper, “sleeper“ is you, it means that you’re able to sleep well. All right, now let’s look at some expressions that mean you’ve had a terrible sleep. So, again, bad sleep. The first one, very common: “I tossed and turned“ all night. If you toss and turn, it means you keep moving during the night. Maybe you’re sleeping like this, it’s uncomfortable, then you sleep like this, then you sleep like this again. You’re moving the whole night and you’re not getting a good night sleep. So if you toss and turn all night, maybe you have a lot of stress, maybe you’re thinking about work the next day, you can’t sleep - you toss and turn all night. So it’s another way to say you have a bad sleep. Another expression: “I didn’t sleep a wink“. So this word right here means wink, okay? It’s when you close your eye. “I didn’t sleep a wink“ means I did not sleep at all. So I have no sleep. Didn’t sleep a wink means... Didn’t sleep a wink-sorry-means no sleep. The next expression is kind of opposite to “deep sleeper“: “I’m a light sleeper“. I’m a light sleeper, this means during the night, I don’t have a good sleep; I wake up a lot. If I hear any noise, it wakes me up. So if my cat meows, I wake up. If the refrigerator starts making noise, I wake up. If somebody enters my house, I wake up. So, a light sleeper means you wake up very easily.