adj. phr., wide-awake, a. and sb. [WIDE adv. + AWAKE pred. a.; predicatively, (usually) as two words; attributively, as one, with hyphen, or occas. without, esp. in senses A. 3, B. 1, 2.]
A. adj. (or adj. phr.) 1. Awake with the eyes wide open; fully awake. (Usually pred.)
1818. Shelley, Julian, 392. I … Will lie and watch ye from my winding-sheet—Thus … wide awake tho’ dead [etc.].
1820. [see AWAKE pred. a. 1].
1840. Dickens, Old C. Shop, xxxix. The baby, who was dreadfully wide awake.
1888. Burgon, Lives 12 Gd. Men, I. iii. 355. He always knew what the Sermon had been about,—better than many who boasted that they had kept wide awake.
2. fig. Thoroughly vigilant or on the alert: fully aware of what is going on, or of what it is best to do; intellectually keen, sharp-witted, knowing. colloq. (orig. slang).
Rarely const. to (cf. AWAKE pred. a. 2 b).
1833. Q. Rev., July, 413. In the language of the turf, his grace was ‘wide awake.’
1835. Dickens, Sk. Boz, Mr. Watkins Tottle, ii. Our governor’s wide awake, he is…. He knows what’s o’clock.
1857. Trollope, Barchester T., 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 [money] on such flimsy security as would be offered, and still less would the very wideawake Chinese merchant.
3. Applied jocularly to a soft felt hat with broad brim and low crown: said to have been punningly so named as not having a ‘nap.’ Now usually absol. as sb. (B. 1).
1841. [W. J. Neale], Paul Periwinkle, I. viii. Jonathan replied, that his hat was like himself—wide awake.
1861. Illustr. Lond. 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.
B. sb. 1. A ‘wide-awake’ hat: see A. 3.
1837. Howitt, Rur. Life, II. iii. (1862), 117. Such is the farm-servant, whether you see him in … his straw-hat, or his wide-awake.
1849. J. Forbes, Phys. Hol., i. (1850), 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. Conan Doyle, Mem. Sherlock Holmes, 35. He was well but quietly dressed in a dark-grey suit, and carried a brown wide-awake in his hand.
2. A sailors’ name for the Sooty Tern (Sterna fuliginosa and allied species), from its cry. Also attrib. in wide-awake fair, a name for the assemblage of these birds on the island of Ascension at the breeding season.
1881. Standard, 12 Aug., 5/2. It [sc. Ascension] nurtures nothing save turtle and wideawakes.
1896. Newton, Dict. Birds, 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.
3. A ‘wide-awake’ person (see A. 2). nonce-use.
1890. C. Martyn, W. Phillips, Agitator, 122. There was then a circle of wide-awakes meeting at irregular intervals under the name of ‘The Friends.’
Hence Wide-awakeness, the state, or character, of being wide awake (usually in sense A. 2). Also (bad formations, due to association with other words) Wide-awakeativeness, -awakedness, -awakefulness, in same sense.
1859. Shirley Brooks, Gordian Knot, xvii. Work that requires … great *wideawakeativeness, and great industry.
1882. Besant, All Sorts, viii. He felt inclined … to slap himself on the back for *wide-awakedness of the rarest kind.
1851. Fraser’s Mag., XLIV. 140. An expression of unutterable self-conceit and conscious *wide-awakefulness.
1887. Miss Betham-Edwards, Next of Kin Wanted, v. They sharpen each other’s wits, and worry each other into a proper state of wideawakefulness.
1865. Lowell, Ess., Scotch the Snake, Wks. 1890, V. 245. *Wide-awakeness of temperament.
1886. Stubbs, Lect. Med. & Mod. Hist., vi. 123. There was something, however, besides the literary wide-awakeness of Henry and his family that made England and its Court at the time a centre of literary activity.
