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Word of the Day Archive
Monday June 16, 2003

land of Nod, noun:
sleep

We were fast going off to the land of Nod, when - bang, bang, bang - on the scuttle, and "All hands, reef topsails, ahoy!" started us out of our berths.
-- Richard Henry Dana Jr., Two Years Before The Mast

For the jet-lagged insomniac, here are a few suggestions of what to do in Manhattan once the last bar has chucked you out and the land of nod seems further away than the night bus to Camberwell.
-- William Hide, "The night shift", The Guardian, February 24, 2001

Land of Nod is a pun on the biblical place-name, the country to which Cain journeyed after slaying Abel. See Genesis, 4:16.

Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for land of Nod