Learn English – “Sleep in” versus “Sleep out”

dialectshiberno-englishphrasesword-usage

Over the years, I have often debated whether the phrase is "In the morning, I'm going to sleep in." or "In the morning, I'm going to sleep out." My best guess is that it is a regional difference of convention.

Is it? Are there any real, historical or otherwise, reasons to prefer one over the other?

(It would be particularly nice, arm-chair linguistically, if it were "I will sleep out." but "I slept in.", though I quite doubt that fits anyone's usage.)

Best Answer

The normal American English would be sleep-in if you plan on doing it on purpose or over-sleep if you do it on accident. Confusingly, sleep-over is different and refers to sleeping at somebody elses house. In the usage you describe, sleep-out is just a variant of sleep-in. The references I found were either British or ESL usage that looks like a second-language mistake. It doesn't look like it's a very common variant, you should stick to sleep-in. Here's the ngram

Ngram for sleep-in vs. sleep-out