wide awakeadj.n.

1658 P. Goodwin Mystery of Dreames i. 6 Sometimes Men may finde as effectuall use of Reason in their sleep as when wide awake.

1739 J. Hildrop Contempt of Clergy 48 Suppose him [sc. a Watchman] to be wide awake, he may happen to be no better employ'd than if he were fast asleep.

1781 London Mag. Nov. 527/2 It is now seven in the morning, and the company are wide awake.

1820 J. Keats Eve of St. Agnes in Lamia & Other Poems 100 She still beheld, Now wide awake, the vision of her sleep.

1841 C. Dickens Old Curiosity Shop ii. xxxix. 10 The baby, who was dreadfully wide awake.

1888 J. W. Burgon Lives Twelve Good Men I. iii. 355 He always knew what the Sermon had been about,—better than many who boasted that they had kept wide awake.

1940 Open Road for Boys Sept. 14/2 Jack, wide awake now, was sitting bolt upright, listening intently.

1957 B. Spock Baby & Child Care (Cardinal ed., rev.) 188 He learns to rouse himself from half awake to wide awake.

2015 M. Paterniti Love & Other Ways of Dying 71 She is a good woman..who a moment ago was sleeping soundly and is now wide awake and jittery.

1785 Whitehall Evening-post 8–10 Sept. When the good sense and spirit of the nation may not be so wide-awake.

1795 J. Fawcett Serm. Sunday-evening Lect. I. vii. 231 Christians are described [in the Scriptures] as ‘the children of the light, and the day’, that ‘sleep not as others’, that are watchful, and wide awake to the objects, which demand their chief attention.

1833 Q. Rev. July 413 In the language of the turf, his grace was ‘wide awake’.

1836 C. Dickens Sketches by Boz 1st Ser. II. 32 Our governor's wide awake, he is... He knows what's o'clock.

1857 A. Trollope Barchester Towers xxxviii Mr. Slope..was wide awake to what he hoped was his coming opportunity.

1906 Spectator 18 Aug. 222/2 Foreign capitalists will not advance it..still less would the very wideawake Chinese merchant.

2008 Weekend Austral. (Nexis) 20 Sept. 19 At his first press conference on Tuesday..an exhausted Turnbull was wide awake to the danger.

1837 Courier 25 Mar. The prisoner..wore the same ‘wide-awake’ hat.

1841 W. J. Neale Paul Periwinkle i. viii. 41 Jonathan replied, that his hat was like himself—wide awake.

1861 Illustr. London News 23 Feb. 168/2 Mr. Hubbard..wears a ‘wide awake’ hat, which is a novelty in the House.

1891 F. W. Maude Merciful Divorce iii. 25 Half a dozen young men in long covert coats, loose breeches and gaiters, and wideawake hats.

1944 J. R. R. Tolkien Let. 6 Oct. (1995) 95 I noticed a strange tall gaunt man half in khaki half in mufti with a large wide-awake hat.

2012 Church Times 4 May 21/3 Whereas Tennyson's unkempt locks and wideawake hat bespoke the poet, Browning dressed like a banker.

1831 P. Bays Narr. Wreck Minerva 77 We saw about half a hundred young birds, called fishermen, (by us, wide-awakes, from the noise they made, so nearly corresponding to the sound of the words, wide awake).

1877 R. L. Price Two Americas iv. 57 Sea-gulls and wide-awakes hovered in hundreds over the water.

1881 Standard 12 Aug. 5/2 It [sc. Ascension] nurtures nothing save turtle and wideawakes.

1909 D. Lindsay & A. L. Holtze Territoria 24 Kangaroo rats, wideawakes, and mountain devils.

1983 Behaviour 87 93 Wideawake terns (Sterna fuscata)..are unable to spend long periods in the water without becoming ‘waterlogged’.

2011 N. Amer. Wildlife 216/2 In the Atlantic, another population of sooty tern, the wideawakes of Ascension Island, nest every 7–9½ months.

1837 Morning Post 25 Mar. He had on him a low black hat, with a round crown. We call them ‘wide awakes’ with us.

1838 W. Howitt Rural Life Eng. I. ii. iii. 163 Such is the farm-servant, whether you see him in..his straw-hat, or his wide-awake.

1849 J. Forbes Physician's Holiday (1850) i. 9 No covering for the head can compete with the thin small-crowned broad-brimmed beavers now known by the name of wide-awakes.

1894 A. Conan Doyle Mem. Sherlock Holmes 35 He..carried a brown wide-awake in his hand.

1923 Humorist 8 Sept. 164/2 I see a timid youth, with two large wideawakes, one in each hand, bleating vainly for his cap.

1992 N. Cohn Heart of World xvii. 248 Its windows were riotous with Stetson and Borsalinos, porkpies, derbies and deerstalkers, slouches and wide-awakes.

1839 Sporting Rev. May 376 The ‘Wide awake’ had, for a long time, escaped the vigilance of the society.

1865 C. Dickens Our Mutual Friend II. iii. xii. 111 You have been told that he might pull through it.., Wide-Awake; have you?

1890 C. Martyn Wendell Phillips 122 A circle of wide-awakes meeting at irregular intervals under the name of ‘The Friends’.

1848 W. Allen & T. R. H. Thomson Narr. Exped. River Niger II. 175 The little colony of hack-backed sterns (Sterna fuliginosa) is called ‘wide-awake fair’.

1896 A. Newton et al. Dict. Birds: Pt. IV 1039 These crowd at certain seasons in innumerable multitude to certain suitable islands, where they breed, and the wonderful assemblage at present known as ‘Wide-awake fair’ on the island of Ascension has been..described from very ancient times.

1967 Observer 26 Feb. 13/8 One can visit the Wideawake Fairs—breeding grounds of thousands of Wideawake terns, who lay an egg each on the bare lava.

1991 J. Hay Bird of Light ii. 31 Another famous colony of sooty terns, on Ascension Island in the mid-south Atlantic, is called Wideawake Fair because of the constant clamor of its population, night and day.

2015 S. Britt-Gallagher & T. Hayne St Helena (ed. 3) 126 Large numbers of the sooty tern or ‘wideawake’ (Onychoprion fuscata) settle on the Widewake Fairs, on the southwest coast, to hatch their eggs.

1841 ‘C. Selby’ Maximums & Speciments W. Muggins xxxiii. 310 A hossler, who, for his huncommon cheek and wide-awakeness, had got the nicname of ‘Charfey’ among his pals.

1865 J. R. Lowell in N. Amer. Rev. July 194 Wide-awakeness of temperament.

1886 W. Stubbs 17 Lect. Study Hist. vi. 123 There was something..besides the literary wideawakeness of Henry..that made England..a centre of literary activity.

2009 N.Y. Rev. Bks. 2 July 6/2 They have a directness and intensity—a wide-awakeness—still capable of astonishing.