wakes

1. 1
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of wake.

   He wakes early on weekdays and sleeps in on Sundays.

   The campsite wakes to birdsong long before the sun is up.

   Note

   The -s form works with either kind of subject. Someone wakes, or something wakes someone else, as when a noise wakes the baby. Up often follows in both uses (she wakes up; the alarm wakes her up). Figurative subjects come easily too: a town wakes, an old fear wakes. In the older sense of keeping watch, it can also mean sitting up through the night beside the dead.

2. 2
   noun

   Plural of wake.

   The ferries cut deep wakes through the crowded harbor.

   Mourners attended both wakes during that somber week.

   Note

   One plural covers the noun's very different senses: the trails that ships leave on the water, the gatherings held after a death, the old parish festivals, and even groups of vultures. The verb that goes with it does the sorting, since ferries leave wakes and mourners attend them. The same spelling also serves as the verb form in "he wakes" and the northern holiday, so a bare wakes needs its sentence around it.

3. 3
   nounplural

   A traditional local holiday in parts of northern England, when a town's workplaces close and people take time off together.

   Factory workers looked forward to the wakes, when the mills fell silent for a week.

   The summer wakes drew crowds to the seaside resorts of Lancashire.

   Note

   A plural-only word: one town's holiday is still the wakes, never a wake. It descends from the old parish festival kept on a church's dedication day, which grew from a night of prayer into days of feasting and rural games. In mill towns the name passed to the yearly shutdown of workplaces, the wakes weeks, when much of a community left for the seaside together.

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