The Origin of Sleep Tight

During one of the lectures in my Psychology of Adolescence class, my professor shared a fun fact I deem worthy of being the first “factoid”…

“Good night. Sleep tight. Don’t let the bed bugs bite. Do any of you know where this phrase originated?”

I thought to myself: The first phrase is self explanatory. The third phrase is downright nasty, somewhat offensive, and impossible to do, although very easy to prevent. The second phrase, however, has always piqued my curiosity. Aside from rhyming, what does it mean?

Colloquially speaking, tight means good. Then, literally speaking, it translates to “sleep well”. Sounds correct but doesn’t sound fulfilling. Fortunately, the complete answer is more satisfying than that.

Thanks to Dr. Alvarez, I learned a little history lesson as well as the origin story. Whereas nowadays mattresses are composed of steel coil springs, in the 19th Century—before mattresses even existed—beds were simply made up of what we now know as bedding held up by ropes tied to what we now know as bed frames. The bedding’s ropes have to be tightly pulled, like a hammock, in order to be comfortable and prevent it from sagging. Fittingly, this led to the phrase “sleep tight”.

Now the next time you say that phrase to someone else, you’ll know exactly what it means!

You won’t just be blindly following a longstanding tradition that is no longer accurate just for the sake of saying it.

Read on for more factoids!