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Glite Dictionary
to go to bed with the chickens

to go to bed with the chickens

1 8.8
To sleep very early, often soon after sunset
  • idiom
  • Archaic
translation icon : irse a la cama al anochecer
  • He goes to bed with the chickens.

Examples

  • Because my dad got up at 4:30 or 5 every morning, we all went to bed with the chickens.

    Fiction book (1998)

  • In the country, we go to bed with the chickens.

  • In the country, we go to bed with the chickens.

    Payne & Redemption (2022)

  • He goes to bed with the chickens.

  • Honey, I've been going to bed with the chickens all of my life.

Synonyms

to sleep early
vsto go to bed with the chickens
  • Indian
3 1.0

To go to bed earlier than usual

is about sleeping very early at or soon after sunset
to go to bed with the sun
vsto go to bed with the chickens
  • Archaic
5.3

To sleep early in the evening when the sun goes down

is about sleeping very early, often just after sunset

Antonyms

to stay up
  • Informal
253 2.4

To be awake later than usual

to dance all night
9 2.7

To move your body to music without stopping for the whole night at a party

How Early

to go to bed with the chickens
  • Archaic
1 8.8
to go to bed
485 1.0
to stay up
  • Informal
253 2.4

Surface Forms

go to bed with the chickens infinitive
went to bed with the chickens past
gone to bed with the chickens past participle
going to bed with the chickens present participle
goes to bed with the chickens third person singular

Morphology

go + to + bed + with + the + chicken

The phrase is compositionally built from 'go to bed' (to sleep) plus 'with the chickens' (i.e. at the same time as chickens, which typically roost at sunset), so the temporal sense 'very early/at sunset' is directly inferable. This animal-based, time-of-day metaphor is common cross-linguistically and a B1 learner who knows the constituents and chickens' habits would readily understand the meaning.

Etymology

Go to bed with the chickens comes from life on farms: when the sun went down the chickens went to their roost and people often went to bed at the same time, so the phrase means 'to go to bed very early'.