wake-up call

British  

noun

1. a telephone call that wakes a person from sleep

2. an event that alerts people to a danger or difficulty

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wake-up call Idioms  

1. A portentous event, report, or situation that brings an issue to immediate attention. For example, The rise in unemployment has given a wake-up call to state governments, or The success of the online subscription is a wake-up call to publishers. This metaphoric term originated in the second half of the 1900s for a telephone call arranged in advance to awaken a sleeper, especially in a hotel. Its figurative use dates from about 1990.

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Example Sentences

See Examples For:

wake-up call

It was also a big wake-up call for families, who may not yet know the extent of the horrors children have faced on the apps.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 29, 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

Some founders and startup executives said Anthropic’s release of Claude Design was a wake-up call across Silicon Valley.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 29, 2026

"It is a wake-up call for the ANC."

From Barron's ● Jun. 25, 2026

Before hanging up he asked her to give him a wake-up call at seven a.m.

From "Mountains Beyond Mountains" by Tracy Kidder and Michael French