English

Adjective

waking ‎(comparative more waking, superlative most waking)

1. Occurring during wakefulness.
   • 1855 March, Caroline Chesebro’, “Kit”, in Graham’s Magazine, Volume 46, Number 3, page 230:

     The city had as yet hardly drawn its first waking breath.

   • a. 2000, “Alice” (possible pseudonym), quoted in Fred Penzel, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorders: A Complete Guide to Getting Well and Staying Well, Oxford University Press (2000), ISBN 978-0-19-514092-7, page page 263:

     Counting occupied my every waking thought.

   • 2003, Moshe Gelbein (translator), Chaim Friedlander (author), quoted in Moshe Gelbein (translator), Meir Munk (author), Searching for Comfort: Coping with Grief, Mesorah Publications, ISBN 978-1-57819-718-7, page 80:

     It is this gift of life that we are grateful to receive each waking moment, and so we give thanks, “for our lives, which are committed to Your power.”

Usage notes

• This adjective most often occurs in phrases such as “every waking moment”, “every waking hour”, “every waking breath”, and so on, the sense being roughly “at all times”. Such phrases are often used together with possessives, such as in “her every waking moment” or “my every waking thought”.

Verb

waking

1. present participle of wake

Noun

waking ‎(plural wakings)

1. The act of becoming awake from sleep, or a period of time spent awake.
   • 1995, Angela Carter, The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories (page 144)

     […] there are no words to describe the way she negotiated the abyss between her dreams, those wakings strange as her sleepings.