1. Keeping awake, esp. while others sleep, not yielding to sleep.
1549. Coverdale, etc., Erasm. Par. Col. iv. 2–4. Continue in prayer, not as dull & heauy people by reason of any surfetyng, but as sober & wakefull.
1596. Spenser, F. Q., I. v. 30. The wakefull dogs did never cense to bay.
1598. Sylvester, Du Bartas, I. ii. 736. As wakefull Students, in the Winter’s night Against the steel,… Strike sudden sparks into their Tinder-box.
1667. Milton, P. L., III. 38. The wakeful Bird Sings darkling, and in shadiest Covert hid Tunes her nocturnal Note.
1710. Steele, Tatler, No. 201, ¶ 10. One of the most wakeful of the Soporifick Assembly.
1729. T. Cooke, Tales, etc., 44. If the Soul … Still bids the wakeful Eye of Sorrow flow.
1820. Byron, Mar. Fal., III. ii. 389. Saint Mark’s great bell at dawn shall find me wakeful!
2. Habitually keeping awake; fig. keeping on the alert, vigilant, watchful.
15[?]. in Puttenham, Engl. Poesie, III. xix. (Arb.), 232. When Prince for his people is wakefull and wise.
1611. Speed, Hist. Gt. Brit., IX. xx. (1623), 959. These dangers … did worthily make the King wakeful euen ouer smaller accidents.
1823. ‘Jon Bee,’ Dict. Turf, s.v. Wake, The Scot considers no man awake or wakeful, who is not alive to his own interests.
1865. Kingsley, Herew., vi. He … had in all things shown himself a daring and wakeful captain.
b. of dispositions or actions.
1561. Norton & Sackv., Gorboduc, I. ii. 193. The brother, that shoulde be the brothers aide, And haue a wakefull care for his defence, Gapes for his death.
a. 1639. W. Whateley, Prototypes, II. xxvi. (1640), 91. God … hath disposed of things so by his wakefull providence.
1741–2. Gray, Agrippina, 192. We could not have beguil’d With more elusive speed the dazzled sight Of wakeful jealousy.
c. 1800. H. K. White, Sonn. Dermody. The pale pilot,… as he plies His wakeful task.
1817. Chalmers, Astron. Disc., v. (1852), 116. Bending a wakeful regard over the men of this sinful world.
1871. J. R. Macduff, Mem. Patmos, v. 57. His unresting, wakeful vigilance.
c. transf. Of inanimate agencies: Continually active, never ceasing or resting.
1697. Dryden, Æneis, IV. 289. A hundred Altars fed with wakeful Fire.
3. Unable to sleep, restless.
1675. Dryden, Aurengz., II. (1676), 23. I shrink far off—Dissembling sleep, but wakeful with the fright. The day takes off the pleasure of the night.
1794. Mrs. Radcliffe, Myst. Udolpho, xxix. Her spirits were wakeful and agitated; and finding it impossible to sleep, she determined [etc.].
1853. M. Arnold, Sohrab & Rustum, 6. All night long He had lain wakeful, tossing on his bed.
1860. Thackeray, Lovel, vi. (1861), 220. Tick—tock! Moment after moment I heard on the clock the clinking footsteps of wakeful grief.
4. Marked by absence or want of sleep.
1628. Pemble, Worthy Rec. Lord’s Supper, 48. Sometimes a wakefull bed calls upon us to examine our hearts.
1697. Dryden, Æneis, IX. 210. They … pass the wakeful Night in Feasts and Play.
1870. R. S. Hawker, Footpr. in Far Cornw. (1903), 67. That night an inspiration visited me in my wakeful bed.
5. Said of dreams, or what is normally characteristic of sleep: Waking.
1638. Junius, Paint. Ancients, 22. Among our idle hopes and wakefull dreames, these Images do follow us so close.
1641. Denham, Sophy, I. ii. All thy feares, Thy wakefull terrors, and affrighting dreames,… have now Their full rewards.
1820. Keats, Eve St. Agnes, xxvii. In sort of wakeful swoon, perplex’d she lay.
1855. Tennyson, Maud, II. IV. v. In a wakeful doze I sorrow For the hand, the lips, the eyes, For the meeting of the morrow.
1886. W. J. Tucker, E. Europe, 316. Following the wayward turn of wakeful fancies.
† 6. Rousing (one) from sleep, awakening. Obs.
1629. Milton, Christ’s Nativity, xvi. Yet first to those ychain’d in sleep, The wakefull trump of doom must thunder through the deep.
Hence Wakefully adv., Wakefulness.
a. 1586. Sidney, Arcadia, III. iv. (1912), 374. Making the cowardly Clinias to have care of the watch, which he knew his own feare would make him very wakefully performe.
1626. Bacon, Sylva, § 925. There be other Perfumes, that … are fit to be vsed in Burning Agues,… and too much Wakefulnesse.
1753. Adventurer, No. 39, ¶ 11. So, perhaps, to each individual of the human species, nature has ordained the same quantity of wakefulness and sleep.
1776. Johnson, in Boswell (1904), I. 654. He should have a lamp constantly burning … and if wakefully disturbed, take a book, and read.
1830. Coleridge, Table-t., 1 May. If he had relaxed the stern wakefulness of his reason for a single moment.
1847. Evanson & Maunsell, Managem. & Dis. Childr. (ed. 5), 352. Wakefulness is a very prominent character of nervous irritation in the child, and should always arrest attention.
1884. Leeds Mercury, 15 Nov., 6/6. England stands firmly and wakefully on guard behind the line up to which the Russians have seen fit to advance.
