Meaning of wake up and smell the coffee | Babel Free

Definitions

Often in the infinitive or imperative: to face reality and stop deluding oneself.

Philippines, US, idiomatic, informal

Equivalents

Examples

“Your paper gains "notice" as an example of the use of English as it should not be written nor spoken. Wake up and smell the coffee.”

“A few years back, when a wife told her husband to "wake up and smell the coffee," it usually was said in utter derision. Now, when there is coffee to smell, she shouts it to him in supreme delight.”

“Wake up and smell the coffee, Dummy. You're a comfort station on a back-street detour. Send him on his way.”

“Dear God, was she going to look at everybody who owned a truck with this sort of suspicion? “Come on, Heskell. Wake up and smell the coffee. They've become the singles bars of the nineties.[…]””

“He had opened his eyes, which was what his first wife was always telling him to do—open your eyes, Al, wake up and smell the coffee—and seen that Rosalind was at least as unhappy as he was, […]”

CEFR level