10 ENGLISH BOOKS RELATING TO «SLEEP LIKE A TOP»
Discover the use of
sleep like a top in the following bibliographical selection. Books relating to
sleep like a top and brief extracts from same to provide context of its use in English literature.
... Hall Heavy with sleep, like faltering, lisping tongues —Boris Pasternak I shall
sleep like a top —Sir William Davenant This simile has outlived the playfrom
which it is taken, The Rivals, as a colloquial expression. A somewhat different
version, ...
2
The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms, Second Edition
[Late 1800s] sleep like a log Also, sleep like a top. Sleep very soundly, as in I
slept like a log, or She said she slept like a top. Both of these similes transfer the
immobility of an object to that of a person who is sound asleep (since a top
spinning ...
3
American English Compendium
Stum som en osters. {Silent as a clam.} Simple as ABC. (=) Easy as pie. Equiv.:
Ko.Sonbadagjechida sipi shibda. {Easy as turning your palm.} Sky high. Sleep
like a log. (=) Sleep like a baby. Sleep like a top. Equiv.: Fr.Dormir comme un
sabot.
4
Common Phrases: And Where They Come From
There's nothing more comfortable than to “sleep like a top.” Yet a top doesn't
sleep. Or does it? It does when the top is not a child's toy but rather a mouse! In
Italian, the word topo means “mouse.” Mice are sound sleepers. This is
particularly ...
Myron Korach, John Mordock
5
notes and queries:
a medium of enter communication for ...
Can any of your readers inform me what is the derivation of the common English
expression, "to sleep like a top ? ** and has it any connexion with the French
saying " Dormir comme une taupe? " E. M. Fodder. [We sometimes adapt foreign
...
6
A complete dictionary of synonyms and antonyms or synonyms ...
To play truant; to weigh down the eyelids, to fold one's arms; to rest upon one's
cars; to burn daylight; to lie iailow; to while away the time; to take a nap; go at! to
sleep; to sleep like a top; to sleep as sound as a top; to sleep like a log; to sleep ...
7
Translation, Linguistics, Culture:
A French-English Handbook
The passage is from The Boy who Followed Ripley, by Patricia Highsmith; in
French, Sur les pas de Ripley. The phrase 'to sleep like a top' seems likely to be
analysed by an English native-speaker as referring to the 'spinning top' sense of
the ...
8
Household words:
a weekly journal
The common phrase, " to sleep like a sabot," though it may fairly bear the novel
interpretation, " to sleep like a wooden shoe " — as the Germans say, " to sleep
like a stone " — is really nothing more than "to sleep like a top;' The sabot is an ...
I to sleep like a top (= to sleep like a log) * toaleqpe<rffllKK^ft(9MR9) (You may
sfeep your headache off. til g^'f/j>IS. □ fltlifl^frdf J' • ) tosleeponitffiS^ftlfS-^*^ ! ft K-
&fffiffi I ©B$*ft&£ (I'll W«p on the matter and ring you up tomorrow, lit to sleep out
1 ...
I have frequently seen the above, but could never learn the origin either of the
portrait or the lines. B. H. C. Sleep like a Top (Vol. vi., p. 51.). —Your
correspondent P. T., in referring to a probable mistranslation in Household Words
of the French ...
