sleep camel

English

Etymology

Perhaps an analogy of a person's storing sleep to a camel's storing water.

Pronunciation

• Audio (General Australian):

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Noun

sleep camel (plural sleep camels)

1. (slang, idiomatic) A person who habitually does with little to no sleep during the week and then makes up by sleeping a lot during the weekend.
   • 2001, Charles B. Handy, The Elephant and the Flea: Reflections of a Reluctant Capitalist, Harvard Business School Press, published 2002, →ISBN, page 100:

     No wonder, then, that so many take their laptops to the beach or that 'sleep camels', as they call them in Silicon Valley, those who sleep only at weekends, are becoming more common.

   • 2001, Richard Reeves, Happy Mondays: Putting the Pleasure Back Into Work‎^[1], Pearson Education Limited, →ISBN:

     Silicon Valley has bred 'sleep camels', who store up sleep at the weekends then work long hours all week.

   • 2014, Rocky F. Catman, Meet Me at the Riverside, Lulu, →ISBN, page 198:

     Sheila told her that John said musicians were like sleep camels when it came to that. They could stay awake for days when they had to.

   • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:sleep camel.