Thursday, May 30, 2013

Rethinking Idioms: Slept Like a Baby

Have you ever heard anybody say, “I slept like a baby?” This is supposed to mean a deep sleep, but is that really what it says? On the surface, this seems like it makes sense, but if you think about, it really means something different than what we use it for. 

Here it means you slept a good uninterrupted sleep, but from my knowledge of sitcoms, not many babies do this. 

Babies sleep at random periods a day, but when they go to sleep for the night they randomly wake up waiting for their parents to sooth them. Hard to think this is happening to thousands of people everyday who are “sleeping like a baby.”

Also, they wake up crying. How do you think babies sleep if they constantly wake up crying like a baby? Not very well. (Not to mention the fact that they sometimes wake up with a less than pleasant diaper).

All in all, the saying, “slept like a baby” means essentially that one did not sleep like a baby. Either that or one spent the night waking up constantly, crying and might have wet the bed. I don’t know about you, but I would not want to tell anybody if that happened to me last night. 

Here’s hoping you never sleep like a baby ever again (unless you are a baby in which it is unavoidable. Also, props on knowing how to read as a baby),
-The Anon Blogger

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4 comments:

  1. I had to think about that one, and I wonder why we even use that term. Most babies do have a rough night and are up all different hours. Maybe we should start to use it when we had a bad nights sleep instead. The things we say are so strange sometimes.

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  2. We had this exact conversation like a week ago! I'd rather sleep like an adult, an old deaf, snoring adult without any children in the house. Best sleep ever. (I'm assuming...)

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  3. So true! I do wonder sometimes about the phrases we use regularly...

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  4. Maybe it's that when they do sleep it's soundly and without the troubles and worries that punctuate the sleep of adults.

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