Home › Glossary › Letter H

Hit the sack

Idiomatic Phrase
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

An idiomatic phrase meaning to go to sleep or retire for the night; colloquial euphemism using bedding metaphor to signal rest in verse, offering informal tonal register and embodied comfort through tactile association.

Detailed Definition
Hit the sack means to go to bed or sleep, usually in informal speech. In poetry, the idiom can bring ordinary fatigue into scenes of work, travel, military life, childhood, ageing, or domestic routine. The phrase has a rough, practical quality, unlike more lyrical descriptions of sleep. This makes it useful when the speaker’s voice is plain, comic, weary, or contemporary. A poet may contrast the casual phrase with deeper meanings of sleep, such as escape, restoration, vulnerability, or death’s rehearsal.
Example
Example in poetry:
A modern lyric might say the tired sailor hit the sack before the moon cleared the mast; In humorous verse, a student hits the sack with textbooks still open on the bed; The phrase hit the sack gives a casual tone to the simple act of going to sleep; A poet could contrast hit the sack with grander images of night and dreaming.
Additional Notes
Hit the sack means go to bed, with sack referring informally to a bed or bedding. Its register is casual and conversational, so it suits modern poems, character speech, comic verse, or scenes of fatigue after labour. In poetry, the phrase can bring sleep down from dreamy symbolism to bodily necessity. Students should compare it with retire, sleep, turn in, and rest, noting how each choice shapes class, period, and voice.
Also Known As
Hit the hay
Skip to main content