Word.ws English Dictionary

waking

/ˈweɪkɪŋ/

waking adjective: occurring during wakefulness. Also the present participle and gerund of wake.

Adjective

waking (comparative more waking, superlative most waking)

  1. Occurring during wakefulness.
    • A waking nightmare
    • The city had as yet hardly drawn its first waking breath.1855 March, Caroline Chesebro’, “Kit”, in Graham’s Magazine, volume 46, number 3, page 230

Noun

waking (plural wakings)

  1. The act of becoming awake from sleep, or a period of time spent awake.
    • […] there are no words to describe the way she negotiated the abyss between her dreams, those wakings strange as her sleepings.1995, Angela Carter, The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories, page 144

Also used as

waking is also the present participle and gerund of wake.

Examples of waking in a sentence

  • Counting occupied my every waking thought.a. 2000, “Alice” (possible pseudonym), quoted in Fred Penzel, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorders: A Complete Guide to Getting Well and Staying...
  • 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.”2003, Moshe Gelbein (translator), Chaim Friedlander (author), quoted in Moshe Gelbein (translator), Meir Munk (author), Searching for...

All 40 example sentences with waking

Forms of waking

Adjective
comparativemore waking
superlativemost waking
Noun
pluralwakings

Words formed from waking

Phrases with waking

Words that rhyme with waking

2 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about waking

What does waking mean?
Waking means occurring during wakefulness.
How do you use waking in a sentence?
Counting occupied my every waking thought.
What part of speech is waking?
Waking can be an adjective or a noun.
How do you pronounce waking?
Waking is pronounced /ˈweɪkɪŋ/.

Words near waking in the dictionary

  1. wakil
  2. wakils
  3. Wakiman
  4. wakin'
  5. Wakindiga
  6. waking
  7. waking 'n baking
  8. waking and baking
  9. waking dream
  10. waking dreams
  11. waking life

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: waking (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Persent101-waking.wav.

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