wake-up call

1. A phone call that one schedules to be placed to one's hotel room in order to be woken up at a certain time. I set an alarm and scheduled a wake-up call so there's no way I oversleep for the first conference session tomorrow.

2. An event that triggers a sense of urgency or the motiviation to make a change. Primarily heard in US, Australia. Harold's sudden chest pain was the wake-up call he needed to finally see his doctor. That terrible car accident was just the wake-up call I needed to quit my boring office job and start acting again.

wake-up call

A portentous event, report, or situation that brings an issue to immediate attention. For example, The rise in unemployment has given a wake-up call to state governments, or The success of the online subscription is a wake-up call to publishers. This metaphoric term originated in the second half of the 1900s for a telephone call arranged in advance to awaken a sleeper, especially in a hotel. Its figurative use dates from about 1990.

Common Names:

Name	Pronounced	Usage
EglĖ	-	Lithuanian
Alphonse	al-FAWNS	French
Kees	KAY:S	Dutch
Mcmanus	[mək'mænəs]
Gunnarr	-	Ancient Scandinavian, Norse Mythology
Veronika	vye-rah-NEE-kah (Russian), vee-rah-NEE-kah (Russian), ve-RO-nee-kah (German, Croatian)	Russian, Czech, Slovak, German, Hungarian, Bulgarian, Slovene, Croatian, Macedonian, Swedish, Norweg