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
Kreszenz	-	German
Hertha	HER-tah	German
Edie	EE-dee	English
Oinone	-	Greek Mythology
Vera (1)	VYE-rah (Russian), VEER-ə (English), VER-ə (English)	Russian, English, German, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Dutch, Portuguese, Italian, Spanish, Hungarian
Raghu	-	Hinduism, Indian, Kannada, Telugu, Malayalam