wake-up
Americannoun
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an act or instance of waking up.
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an act or instance of being awakened.
I asked the hotel desk for a wake-up at 6.
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a time of awaking or being awakened.
I'll need a 5 o'clock wake-up to make the early plane.
adjective
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serving to wake one from sleep.
Tell the front desk you want a wake-up call.
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serving to arouse or alert.
a wake-up call on the problems of pollution.
noun
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informal an alert or intelligent person
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informal to be fully alert to (a person, thing, action, etc)
Etymology
Origin of wake-up
First recorded in 1835–45; noun, adj. use of verb phrase wake up
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
“The wake-up call was necessary. It’s been very easy for Western powers in recent decades to be lulled into a sense of false security,” Hood said.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 21, 2026
That milestone back in 1981 was treated as a wake-up call.
From BBC ● Aug. 20, 2026
The OpenAI incident has, as Hugging Face's co-founder Thomas Wolf described it, come as a "wake-up call" for the tech industry since it happened at the end of July.
From BBC ● Aug. 6, 2026
“This is the wake-up call. There has to be a catch-up in terms of investments,” said ING’s Brzeski.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 17, 2026
“That whole incident, though, it was a bit of a wake-up call.”
From "The Truth as Told by Mason Buttle" by Leslie Connor
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
