Word.ws English Dictionary

counting sheep

counting sheep is the present participle and gerund of count sheep.

Meaning of count sheep

Verb

count sheep (third-person singular simple present counts sheep, present participle counting sheep, simple past and past participle counted sheep)

  1. (idiomatic) To attempt to go to sleep by thinking of something boring, traditionally by counting imaginary sheep.

Questions about counting sheep

What is counting sheep the present participle and gerund of?
Counting sheep is the present participle and gerund of count sheep.

Words near counting sheep in the dictionary

  1. counting rhymes
  2. counting rod
  3. counting rods
  4. counting room
  5. counting rooms
  6. counting sheep
  7. counting sort
  8. counting sorts
  9. counting the hours
  10. counting to 10
  11. counting to five

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: counting sheep (page history and authors); count sheep (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “counting sheep.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/counting_sheep. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.