Search the Dictionary

Not sleeping; indisposed to sleep; watchful; vigilant. Dissembling sleep, but wakeful with the fright. Dryden. -- Wake"ful*ly, adv. -- Wake"ful*ness, n.

To wake; to cease to sleep; to be awakened. Early, Turnus wakening with the light. Dryden.

One who wakens.

The act of one who wakens; esp., the act of ceasing to sleep; an awakening.

One who wakes.

Time during which one is awake. [R.] Mrs. Browning.

ed in other counties. Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, and Nottinghamshire are divided into wapentakes, instead of hundreds. [Written also wapentac.] Selden. Blackstone.

One whose occupation is to make and repair watches.

The spotted crake (Porzana maruetta). See Illust. of Crake.

A common North American colubrine snake (Tropidonotus sipedon) which lives chiefly in the water.

One who makes a way; a precursor. [R.] Bacon.

To make weak; to lessen the strength of; to deprive of strength; to debilitate; to enfeeble; to enervate; as, to weaken the body or the mind; to weaken the hands of a magistrate; to weaken the force of an objection or an argument. Their hands shall be weakened from the work, that it be not done. Neh. vi. 9.…

One who, or that which, weakens. "[Fastings] weakeners of sin." South.

Fully awake; not Dickens.

One who makes widows by destroying husbands. [R.] Shak.

Shaken by the wind; specif. (Forestry),

p. p. of Wreak. Chaucer.

Avenger. [Obs.] The stork, the wrekere of avouterye [adultery]. Chaucer.

Made.

§§ 43-74. The regular long a, as in fate, etc., is a comparatively modern sound, and has taken the place of what, till about the early part of the 17th century, was a sound of the quality of ä (as in far).