What is the origin of the word "wake"; used to mean the period between death and interment?

Answer 1

In the 1500s in UK, those with money had plates made of pewter. Food with high acid content caused some of the lead to leach onto the food, causing lead poisoning death. This happened most often with tomatoes, so for the next 400 years or so, tomatoes were considered poisonous. Lead cups were used to drink ale or whiskey and this combination would sometimes knock the imbibers out for a couple of days. Someone walking along the road would take them for dead and prepare them for burial. They were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up.

Hence the custom of holding a wake.

England is old and small and the local folks started running out of places to bury people. So they would dig up coffins and would take the bones to a bone-house, and re-use the grave. When re-opening these coffins, 1 out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realized they had been burying people alive. So they would tie a string on the wrist of the corpse, thread it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell. Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night (the graveyard shift.) to listen for the bell; thus, someone could be saved by the bell or was considered a dead ringer.

Answer 2

"state of wakefulness," O.E. -wacu (as in nihtwacu "night watch"), related to watch; and partly from O.N. vaka "vigil, eve before a feast," related to vaka "be awake" (cf. O.H.G. wahta "watch, vigil," M.Du. wachten "to watch, guard;" see wake (v.)). Meaning "a sitting up at night with a corpse" is attested from 1412 (the verb in this sense is recorded from c.1250). The custom largely survived as an Irish activity. Wakeman (c.1200), which survives as a surname, was M.E. for "watchman."

I myself prefer the "wake" as a nautical analogy: the person's life cuts a wake through his friends and family like a boat in water.

Answer 3

2 ( wakes) [treated as sing. ] chiefly historical (in some parts of the UK) a festival and holiday held annually in a rural parish, originally on the feast day of the patron saint of the church. [ORIGIN: probably from Old Norse vaka.]

Answer 4

ETYMOLOGY:
Middle English wakien, waken, from Old English wacan, to wake up, and wacian, to be awake, keep watch; see weg- in Indo-European roots

Answer 5

When I was growing up, folks called the visitation of the body the night before the funeral a 'wake'.

Answer 6

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Answer 7

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