Skip to main content
Glite Dictionary
to saw logs

to saw logs

1 8.6
To make loud breathing noises while sleeping
  • idiom
  • Informal
translation icon : roncar
  • While watching TV, I could hear my brother sawing logs in the other room.

Examples

  • The baby was so tired that he started sawing logs as soon as his head hit the pillow.

  • I was steering this crate while you and Commander Coma were sawing logs!

    Space Chimps (2008)

  • CLOSE ON Manray, who's sawing logs, snoring loudly.

    Fiction book (2000)

  • After a long day at work, he fell asleep and was soon sawing logs.

Synonyms

to snore
vsto saw logs
88 1.0

To breathe noisily through the nose or mouth while asleep

is informal and used in casual speech rather than neutral term
to saw wood
vsto saw logs
  • Informal
9.0

Make loud snoring noises while sleeping

is the same informal meaning but uses a different phrasing

Antonyms

to be quiet
231 1.0

To stop making noise or talking

How Loudly

to saw logs
  • Informal
1 8.6
to snore
88 1.0

Surface Forms

saw logs infinitive
sawed logs past
sawed logs past participle
sawing logs present participle
saw logs third person singular

Morphology

saw + logs

The phrase 'saw logs' uses the literal words 'saw' and 'logs' but its meaning ('to snore loudly') is a metaphorical image (snoring sounds like sawing wood) rather than a direct composition of constituent senses. A B1 learner who knows 'saw' and 'logs' might occasionally guess a noise-related sense, but the specific mapping to snoring is informal and culturally idiomatic, so comprehension is only partly predictable without prior exposure.

Etymology

Saw logs may come from imagining a saw cutting logs: the back and forth, rough sound is like loud snoring. That's why saw logs means 'to snore loudly'.