the.com/snooze
the nine-minute lie you tell yourself before telling it again
means To sleep lightly for a short while, especially that brief stretch you steal after silencing an alarm.
from A word with murky beginnings — it first surfaces in English in the early 1800s, apparently as slang, with no agreed-upon ancestor. Its sound seems half the point: that drowsy nasal hum is likely imitative, a cousin to 'snore' and the whole sleepy family of 'sn-' words. The famous 'snooze button' came much later, attached to alarm clocks in the 20th century, and turned a noun for dozing into the small daily ritual we know now.
- nine minutes
- early clock gears couldn't fit a tidy ten
- sleep penalty
- fragmented dozing leaves you groggier than waking once
- hormone trap
- each restart spikes stress hormones before dawn
- average abuser
- people snooze for years of cumulative half-sleep
snooze button — first patented by general electric in 1956, now standard on most alarm clocks
snooze alarm feature — iphone's sleep option that delays wake-up by 9 minutes, apple's default interval since 2007