Englishhit the sack
Meaning: To go to bed.
Example: “It's past midnight; I'm going to hit the sack.”
Origin: Ties back to a genuinely common older mattress: before manufactured bedding was widespread, many mattresses were simple sacks stuffed with straw or hay, and "hitting" the sack — literally striking or punching it — helped redistribute the packed straw inside, loosening clumps and making a lumpy bed marginally more comfortable before lying down on it. "Hit the hay," documented from the early 1900s, carries the identical logic using the stuffing material directly rather than the sack containing it. "Hit the sack" specifically took hold as an established, widely used phrase thanks to American soldiers during the Second World War, for whom "sack" was already standard military slang for a sleeping bag — a fresh, wartime reinforcement of an older civilian idiom rather than an entirely new coinage.
More English idioms
- hold the fort To take care of a place or to keep an activity going while someone is away.
- fall for something hook, line, and sinker To believe something completely, usually in the sense of being fooled.
- hopping mad Very angry.
- hot under the collar Very angry.
- if push comes to shove If the situation becomes serious.
- in a bind In a difficult situation or position.
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