- English translation
"Go to sleep so I can cut your throat." "Well, that's exactly what keeps a person awake."
- Literal wording
"Sleep so that I may slaughter you." He said: "That is a thing that makes sleep fly away."
- Meaning and lesson
The saying mocks an absurd request: one party asks another to fall asleep while announcing that the sleeper will then be killed. The slaughter is a figurative, darkly comic image, not a literal threat. The reply exposes the contradiction: the stated purpose makes compliance impossible.
More broadly, it applies when someone demands calm, trust, or passivity from a person they openly intend to harm or exploit. The expression points out that revealing a hostile aim destroys the very cooperation being sought, and it ridicules anyone who expects a victim to stay complacent.
- When it is used
Use it to answer someone who wants you calm, cooperative, or unbothered while openly planning something against you. It suits wry, darkly comic replies that point out the contradiction in being asked to relax in the face of a declared threat.
- Register
- colloquial
Cite or copy proverb
How this record reached us: Editorially sourced.
Report an issue with this meaning: "Go to sleep so I can cut your throat." "Well, that's exactly what keeps a person awake."