wakeful
Americanadjective
-
unable to sleep; not sleeping; indisposed to sleep.
Excitement made the children wakeful.
-
characterized by absence of sleep.
a wakeful night.
- Antonyms:
- sleepful
-
watchful; alert; vigilant.
a wakeful foe.
adjective
-
unable or unwilling to sleep
-
sleepless
-
alert
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of wakeful
Explanation
Are you alert and restless at 4 am? Then you can say you're wakeful, or not able to sleep at all. You might as well get up and start your day. If you're wide awake, especially when you should be asleep, you're wakeful. A wakeful baby can be perfectly pleasant in the middle of the day but is a lot less fun after midnight. Many new parents spend weeks or months of wakeful nights, and even getting a new puppy can lead to a long, wakeful period of your life. Before it meant simply "marked by being awake," this adjective meant "diligent."
Vocabulary lists containing wakeful
Beowulf
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Lalani of the Distant Sea
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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 is difficult to adequately convey the difference between experiencing 16 wakeful hours per day and white-knuckling your way through a brutal 20.
From Slate ● Nov. 1, 2026
Still, midnight drives with a wakeful infant aren’t quite the same test he faces in his latest TV role.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 11, 2024
Identifying processes in the brain that underlie sleep-deprived boosting of mood could lead to therapies that are less burdensome than enduring a wakeful night.
From Scientific American ● Jul. 3, 2023
Could it be possible that Bunny was dreaming about a strange animal she encountered during her wakeful hours?
From Salon ● Jul. 24, 2021
Nhamo lay wakeful and nervous for a long time.
From "A Girl Named Disaster" by Nancy Farmer
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Get a wordDefinitions 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.
