40 Winks

Inspired by the question How long is a 'wink'?, I did some work on the origin of the phrase forty winks. Though the OP at the wink question mentions the phrase, it does not ask about its origin. So I thought I'd ask the question here and post what I've found. I was able to find an antedating not mentioned by any of the usual phrase-dictionary suspects. The most accurate information I found elsewhere was from a post by Ken G in a discussion of the phrase at Wordwizard. Any other insights welcome.

40 Winks

The phrase forty winks, meaning a short nap, can be traced back to Dr. Kitchiner's 1821 self-help guide, The Art of Invigorating and Prolonging Life. The phrase is mentioned in a November 1821 issue of the British Literary Chronicle, in a review of Kitchiner's book:

Sleep is a subject on which our author acknowledges his feelings are tremblingly alive; he is fond of a 'forty-winks' nap in an horizontal posture,' as the best preparative for any extraordinary exertion, either of body or mind.

The use of quotes around a forty winks nap seems to indicate Kitchiner might have borrowed the phrase from elsewhere, but I can't find it in any form earlier than his use of it. Also, Kitchiner carefully footnotes other phrases and passages from different authors throughout his book.

There was also the idiomatic expression nine winks in the mid 19th century. Eric Partridge in his The Routledge Dictionary of Historical Slang claims that the term already existed in 1820. I found evidence to support this in John Badcock's: Slang: A Dictionary of the Turf, the Ring, the Chase, the Pit, of Bon-ton printed in 1823. The slang term "forty winks" was not yet listed, which suggests that the idiom was either too new to have merited its own entry or had not yet been coined.

As the earliest recorded evidence of forty winks is found in 1822, it is most likely that John Badcock was unaware of its existence. In light of this, Kitchiner was probably referring to the established nine winks phrase when he placed his (neologistic) "A Forty Winks Nap" in quotes.

Some books on English idioms claim that the phrase forty winks was used as early as 1820. However, the first recorded use of the phrase did not appear until later, in an 1872 edition of Punch Magazine,

It is unclear how the phrase evolved from take forty winks to catch forty winks. Even today, people use take forty winks and catch forty winks interchangeably. Although each phrase uses a different verb, the meaning of both phrases is the same.

40 Winks is a 3D action-platform game in which you play as Ruff or Tumble, two children who must battle ghosts, goblins and other monsters in their dream-world. They must try to capture 40 winks scattered around the world in order to stop an evil old man named Nitekap. Nitekap wants to turn the winks into hood-winks, the things responsible for nightmares. You also have to find the 12 dream keys to unlock the boss level. A unique aspect of the game allows the players to temporarily morph into different costumes with special abilities. The costumes include a Prehistoric Man, Jester, Super Hero, and Ninja. 041b061a72