Dwain Northey (Gen X)

Language is a funny thing. We use phrases every day without giving much thought to where they came from or whether they make any damn sense in the first place. Take the phrase “sleeping with someone.”

Somewhere along the way, we decided that sleeping with someone meant having sex with them. Not actually sleeping, mind you. Not sharing a bed, enjoying a little pillow talk, or waking up wondering why someone else is hogging all the blankets. No, apparently, it means you met someone, things got a little interesting, perhaps alcohol was involved, and you engaged in a brief moment of drunken fornication before going your separate ways.

So, naturally, your friends ask, “Did you sleep with them?”

Well, technically, no. You were both awake for the important part, and if everything went according to plan, you probably weren’t sticking around for the sleeping portion either.

How did we get here? The expression likely grew out of the older, more literal idea of sharing a bed with someone, which became a euphemism for sexual intimacy. Somewhere along the way, the euphemism outlived the original meaning, and now we use it to describe an act that might have lasted twenty minutes without anyone ever closing their eyes.

Perhaps fornication would be a more accurate word, although it does sound like something you’d find in a dusty religious text or hear from a disappointed medieval priest. Maybe that’s why it never caught on in everyday conversation.

But that’s the thing about language. Words and phrases don’t always evolve because they make sense. Sometimes they survive because everyone understands what they mean, even when the literal interpretation is complete nonsense.

We do this constantly. We inherit expressions from generations past, repeat them without question, and rarely stop to examine the absurdity hiding in plain sight.

So the next time someone asks whether you slept with somebody, perhaps ask for clarification. Did you actually sleep together, or are we discussing an entirely different activity?

Because apparently, in the English language, you can sleep with someone without sleeping, spend the night without spending the entire night, and have a one-night stand without necessarily standing at any point.

And we wonder why English is difficult to learn.