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Glite Dictionary
to sleep at night

to sleep at night

11 6.1
To feel no guilt about what you did
  • idiom
  • Informal
translation icon : dormir tranquilo
  • After being honest about his mistakes, he felt he could finally sleep at night without guilt.
  • sleep at night knowing
  • able to sleep at night

So like, please, so I can sleep at night, please tell me what happened.

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Examples

  • For example, I couldn't sleep at night knowing that my fans lost money because of me.

    George Janko

  • If you can live with that, if you can sleep at night, more power to you.

    Blog text (16)

  • So like, please, so I can sleep at night, please tell me what happened.

    cari can read

  • Is that what you tell yourself, so you can sleep at night?

    Lansky (2021)

  • But if it helps you sleep at night, you can believe whatever you like.

    Blog text (28)

  • I hope the people responsible for that failure have trouble sleeping at night.

    Blog text (28)

  • If you truly believe stuff like this, I don't know how you sleep at night.

    Blog text (25)

  • Safety is a myth to which we all cling so that we can sleep at night.

    Blog text (18)

  • I don't know how these wannabe adoptive parents sleep at night, but I worry more for these children.

    Blog text (28)

  • So if having the watermark removed from your system is where you draw the line and that's what helps you sleep at night, then that's great.

Antonyms

guilt
375 2.4

A feeling of being sorry and responsible for doing something wrong

How Guilty

guilt-ridden
5 6.5
uneasy
98 3.2
to sleep at night
  • Informal
11 6.1

Surface Forms

sleep at night infinitive
slept at night past
slept at night past participle
sleeping at night present participle
sleeps at night third person singular

Morphology

sleep + at + night

The literal words give 'sleep during the night', but the MWE’s meaning 'to be able to live with one’s actions without guilt' is a pragmatic/metaphorical extension (if you can sleep at night you are at peace of mind). The link is inferable from the constituents but requires pragmatic reasoning beyond simple composition, so it is partially but not fully predictable for a B1 learner.

Etymology

Sleep at night comes from the simple image of sleep at night: if your actions do not trouble you, you can rest quietly when night comes. So, to say someone can sleep at night means they do not feel 'guilty' or 'worried' about what they did.