为什麼40 winks是打盹，40是什麼意思？

Forty (40) winks - "Early colonists simply would 'got to bed' or 'take a nap,' as they had in England, but in the 1820s our terms '40 winks' and 'cat nap' grew common," according to Stuart Berg Flexner in "Listening to America" (Simon and Schuster, New York, 1982).

Charles Earle Funk, in "Heavens to Betsy!" (Harper & Row, New York, 1955) hazards a guess as to why 40: "to take forty winks - Though I'm not saying that the reading of the Thirty-nine Articles has an actual bearing on the 'forty winks' or short nap that is likely to succeed that reading - or interrupt it - such a sequel could be inferred. The Thirty-nine Articles, for the benefit of the unenlightened, are the articles of faith of the Church of England which the clergy are required to accept. Adoption became legal by parliamentary action in 1571 in the reign of Elizabeth I. Needless to say, the perusal of these articles is likely to