I'm going to grab 40 winks....?

where and how did this phrase come about to mean sleep??

I'm going to grab 40 winks....?
The expression derives from the closed-eye position, or extended wink assumed during sleep (‘wink’ has been associated with sleep since the 14th century), but implies that the resting person does not fall into a deep sleep. %26lt;“There’s just time for forty winks before we have to leave”%26gt;. But why 40 winks for a short nap?





One story suggests that the Thirty-nine Articles, the articles of faith that the Church of England clergy have been required to accept since 1571, are responsible for the phrase. It seems that a writer in Punch (November 16, 1872) quipped: “If a . . . man, after reading through the Thirty-nine Articles were to take FORTY WINKS . . . ” and that his joke about the long and tedious Articles led to the expression for a short nap.





However, the above story, although widely circulated, cannot be the source of the expression because ‘40 winks’ was recorded in print as early as the 1820s (see below), with George Elliot using it in 1866. The more likely explanation is that the use of ‘40’ follows from the old tradition of using 40 to designate an indefinite number (many) as in Shakespeare’s Coriolanus (Act III, Scene i): “I could beat forty of them.” In fact, Cassell’s Dictionary of Slang gives ‘many’ as a slang definition of FORTY dating from the mid-19th century.





Other examples of the use of forty to express many are: Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves ‘forty fits’ (a conniption’), ‘forty miles from nowhere.’ From the Bible we have forty days and forty nights which applies to the Flood, the number of years the Israelites wandered in the wilderness, the number of days Christ spent on earth after the Resurrection, the time Noah spent fasting on Mt. Sinai and that Jesus spent fasting in the wilderness.
Reply:From battlefields, and from ship's watch system: in course of time from all busy-bodies and security sentries! If you are very very busy, and if you want to maintain health sans fatigue problems, take care to get the 40 winks now and then!
Reply:it came from, it only takes 40 winks to be refreshed, it's an old saying, so injoy them
Reply:A brief nap, as in There's just time for forty winks before we have to leave. This expression supposedly was first recorded in 1828 and relies on wink in the sense of "sleep," a usage dating from the 14th century.

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