Learn English – the origin of “wake up and smell the roses”

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Where did this saying come from, and what is its true meaning?

Best Answer

The phrase "Wake up and smell the roses!" appears to be a conflation of two separate phrases, namely, "Wake up and smell the coffee!" and "Stop and smell the roses". This is confirmed to an extent by the following ngram:

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Going by the graph, the two "source" phrases appear to have become popular in the 1970s while the conflated version appears to have done so in the 1980s.

According to Barry Popik (a contributor to the OED), the OED has an entry for the phrase, "Wake up and smell the coffee!":

slang (orig. U.S.). to wake up and smell the coffee (also decaf, etc.): to be realistic or aware; to abandon a naive or foolish notion. Freq. in imper.

Popularized by the U.S. syndicated advice columnist ‘Ann Landers’ (1918-2002, b. Esther Pauline Friedman).

1943 Chicago Daily Tribune 18 Jan. 17/2 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

1955 ‘A. LANDERS’ in Oshkosh (Wisconsin) Daily Northwestern 21 Dec. 23/2 Wake up and smell the coffee. Do you want a wife who smokes, drinks, likes taverns and slaps you around?

The phrase, "Wake up and smell the roses!", carries the same meaning, and going by the nGram and the results on Google Books, is used around the world albeit far less frequently than the other two.

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