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.
It’s a wake-up call to the art world that the Louvre incident might have spawned a wave of copycat thefts.
From The Wall Street Journal • Apr. 1, 2026
The “Messy” hitmaker told Rolling Stone in a recent interview that she was grateful that she fainted onstage late last year, and framed the scary ordeal as a wake-up call.
From Los Angeles Times • Mar. 31, 2026
"We can call it a wake-up call," says Breuer.
From BBC • Mar. 27, 2026
“The fact that non-fuel import prices increased so much is a wake-up call for policymakers and will keep the Federal Reserve in pause for longer than expected,” said Eugenio Aleman, chief economist at Raymond James.
From MarketWatch • Mar. 25, 2026
Everybody woke up but it was a fake wake-up, we were all soon back asleep, even though it was morning.
From "The Watsons Go to Birmingham" by Christopher Paul Curtis
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.
