waking

Pluralwakings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of wake.

   He is slowly waking from a deep, dreamless sleep.

   Waking the baby now would undo an hour of effort.

   Note

   The -ing form carries every use of wake, so its meaning shifts with its object. Without one it means coming out of sleep, often with up (she was waking up slowly). With one it means rousing someone else (waking the baby). It also covers the older sense of keeping watch over the dead through the night. When it describes a noun instead, it has become the adjective of wakefulness.

2. 2
   adjective

   Occurring or experienced while a person is awake rather than asleep.

   Her waking thoughts were consumed by the upcoming trial.

   He devoted nearly every waking hour to finishing the manuscript.

   Similarconscious

   Oppositesleeping

   Note

   An adjective that stands before its noun: a waking nightmare, a first waking breath, every waking thought, each waking moment. The pairing with every or each is the idiom to know. Every waking hour means all the time someone is awake, and so, loosely, all the time they have. A waking nightmare turns the image around: it is a nightmare lived with the eyes open.

3. 3
   noun

   An awakening from sleep or an interval of wakefulness.

   His unexpected waking from the coma surprised the doctors.

   The brief waking between dreams left her unsure of the time.

   Similarawakening

   Note

   A countable noun, so each return from sleep can be counted and pluralized. Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories (1995) speaks of "those wakings strange as her sleepings," setting the plural against its opposite. The noun covers both the moment of surfacing and the stretch of time spent awake, and context decides which one is meant.

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