To wake is to stop sleeping or to make someone stop sleeping; a wake is also a gathering held after someone dies, where people honor and remember them.
From Old English “wacan” (to become awake) and “wacian” (to be awake, watch), related to a Proto-Germanic root meaning “to be watchful.” The funeral sense comes from the idea of staying awake to watch over the dead.
The same root connects waking up in the morning and staying awake all night with a body at a funeral. In physics, a “wake” is the disturbed water behind a moving boat—another kind of trace left behind something that has passed.
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