Word.ws English Dictionary

smell the coffee

smell the coffee verb: to wake up and smell the coffee.

Verb

smell the coffee (third-person singular simple present smells the coffee, present participle smelling the coffee, simple past and past participle smelled the coffee)

  1. To wake up and smell the coffee.
    • The gay and lesbian movement has been white and middle class, and it is very meaningful for working class gay and gay people of color that our movement has finally smelled the coffee on this and it is taking up in a major way.1991 December 15, Jacob Smith Yang, quoting Sue Hyde, “Anti-ROTC Or Anti-Military?”, in Gay Community News, volume 19, number 22, page 6

Forms of smell the coffee

third-person singular presentsmells the coffee
present participlesmelling the coffee
past participlesmelled the coffee
pastsmelled the coffee

Questions about smell the coffee

What does smell the coffee mean?
Smell the coffee means to wake up and smell the coffee.
What part of speech is smell the coffee?
Smell the coffee is a verb.
What is the past tense of smell the coffee?
The past tense of smell the coffee is smelled the coffee.

Words near smell the coffee in the dictionary

  1. smell oneself
  2. smell out
  3. smell test
  4. smell tests
  5. smell the barn
  6. smell the coffee
  7. smell the roses
  8. smell trap
  9. smell traps
  10. smell up
  11. smell what someone is stepping in

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: smell the coffee (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “smell the coffee.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/smell_the_coffee. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.