1
a
: to be or remain awake
b
archaic
: to remain awake on watch especially over a corpse
c
obsolete
: to stay up late in revelry
1
: to stand watch over (someone or something)
especially
: to hold a wake over
waker
noun
1
: the state of being awake
2
a(1)
: an annual English parish festival formerly held in commemoration of the church's patron saint
(2)
b
: the festivities originally connected with the wake of an English parish church
—usually used in plural but singular or plural in construction
c
British
: an annual holiday or vacation
—usually used in plural but singular or plural in construction
3
: a watch held over the body of a dead person prior to burial and sometimes accompanied by festivity
1
: the track left by a moving body (such as a ship) in a fluid (such as water)
broadly
: a track or path left
see also:
Examples of wake in a Sentence
Verb
She can never remember her dreams upon waking.
my banging around in the kitchen woke my wife
Recent Examples on the Web
Shayla Love, New Yorker, 1 May 2026
Throngs of motorboaters flock to Boyd Lake every summer for water skiing, wake boarding and other aquatic activities on a reservoir whose primary purpose is furnishing drinking water for Greeley and serving northern Colorado agricultural needs.
—John Meyer, Denver Post, 1 May 2026
Pauline J. Yao, Artforum, 2 May 2026
Eta Aquarid meteors can be spotted from April 19 to May 28 as Earth passes through the debris trail left in the wake of Halley's Comet as the comet races along its 76-year orbit.
—Anthony Wood, Space.com, 2 May 2026
See All Example Sentences for wake
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Verb
Andrillon warned against trying to harness the sleeping mind in the service of the waking world.
—Shayla Love, New Yorker, 1 May 2026
Throngs of motorboaters flock to Boyd Lake every summer for water skiing, wake boarding and other aquatic activities on a reservoir whose primary purpose is furnishing drinking water for Greeley and serving northern Colorado agricultural needs.
—John Meyer, Denver Post, 1 May 2026
Noun
In the wake of the Para Site retrospective came a wave of new opportunities and invitations to work at an increasingly ambitious scale, including a commission for the M+ Facade, a 360-foot-wide harbor-facing LED screen on the side of the Hong Kong museum.
—Pauline J. Yao, Artforum, 2 May 2026
Eta Aquarid meteors can be spotted from April 19 to May 28 as Earth passes through the debris trail left in the wake of Halley's Comet as the comet races along its 76-year orbit.
—Anthony Wood, Space.com, 2 May 2026
See All Example Sentences for wake
Cite this Entry
“Wake.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/wake. Accessed 3 May. 2026.
Copy CitationKids Definition
wake
2 of 3 noun
: a time before a dead person is buried when people gather to remember him or her and often to view the body
wake
3 of 3 noun1
: a track or path left by a moving body (as a ship) in the water
Etymology
Verb
from Old English wacan "to awake" and Old English wacian "to be awake"
Noun
of Germanic origin
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