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Sleep Tight . . . The phrase "sleep tight" doesn't seem to make much sense. How do you sleep tight? What's wrong with sleeping loose? Do you fall apart if you sleep loose?
Actually, this saying comes from the days before waterbeds, foam mattresses, and even springs. Bed frames used to be made of a wooden frame with a rope lattice strung across it. The mattress was placed on top of the rope. When the rope started to stretch, the bed sagged. To get rid of the sag, people took a large wooden screw called a key and tightened the ropes, making it firm and comfortable again. "Sleep tight" came to mean to sleep comfortably on a tight or firm bed.
. . . And Don't Let The Bedbugs Bite
Mattresses as late as the 1930s were often large cloth bags filled with corn husks, straw, dried grass, leaves, or even Spanish moss. (Only very rich people had mattresses filled with feathers or down.) No matter how careful you were when you filled your mattress, you would probably leave bugs, eggs, or larvae in it. At night the bugs would move to the warmest part of the bed-your body-and settle down after giving you a few friendly bites. Today, this saying may once again be more common since there is a resurgence of bedbugs due to more international travel.
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Why do we say
Sleep Tight . . . The phrase "sleep tight" doesn't seem to make much sense. How do you sleep tight? What's wrong with sleeping loose? Do you fall apart if you sleep loose?Actually, this saying comes from the days before waterbeds, foam mattresses, and even springs. Bed frames used to be made of a wooden frame with a rope lattice strung across it. The mattress was placed on top of the rope. When the rope started to stretch, the bed sagged. To get rid of the sag, people took a large wooden screw called a key and tightened the ropes, making it firm and comfortable again. "Sleep tight" came to mean to sleep comfortably on a tight or firm bed.
. . . And Don't Let The Bedbugs Bite
Mattresses as late as the 1930s were often large cloth bags filled with corn husks, straw, dried grass, leaves, or even Spanish moss. (Only very rich people had mattresses filled with feathers or down.) No matter how careful you were when you filled your mattress, you would probably leave bugs, eggs, or larvae in it. At night the bugs would move to the warmest part of the bed-your body-and settle down after giving you a few friendly bites. Today, this saying may once again be more common since there is a resurgence of bedbugs due to more international travel.
