Other forms: naps
A nap is a short sleep in the middle of the day. Take a nap, an afternoon nap, a quick nap.
Twenty minutes is the useful length, because going much beyond it means waking out of deep sleep and feeling worse than before — the grogginess has a name, sleep inertia. Napping is normal practice in much of the world. Note that nap also means the raised surface on cloth, which is a different word.
1nounnapA short sleep in the middle of the day.
“Grandpa always has a short nap after lunch.”
nap is a short sleep.
Also accepted in games: snooze, doze
Old English hnappian means to doze. The nap of cloth is an unrelated word from Dutch.
Proto-West Germanic
*hnappōn — to nap
Old English
hnappian — to doze, slumber, sleep
Middle English
nappen
English, today
nap
From Middle English nappen, from Old English hnappian (“to doze, slumber, sleep”), from Proto-West Germanic hnappōn (“to nap”). Cognate with Old High German hnaffezan, hnaffezzan (whence Middle High German nafzen (“to slumber”) whence German - dialectal napfezen, nafzen (“to nod, slumber, nap”)).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA