big sleep
nounEtymology Apparently coined by novelist Raymond Chandler, author of The Big Sleep (1939).
1
Euphemistic, Idiomatic Death.
Almost always preceded by the
- What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on top of a high hill? You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that.1939, Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep, Penguin, published 2011, page 250:
- Before I sink into the big sleep / I want to hear / The scream of the butterfly1967, “When the Music’s Over”, in Strange Days, performed by The Doors: