fit to wake the dead
- idiom
- Informal
- The music was fit to wake the dead!
Examples
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The thunder was fit to wake the dead, shaking the whole neighborhood.
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When she shouted across the room, her voice was fit to wake the dead.
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The alarm clock rang fit to wake the dead every morning at six.
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Is this concert really fit to wake the dead?
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The alarm clock rang fit to wake the dead every morning at six.
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When she shouted across the room, her voice was fit to wake the dead.
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The thunder was fit to wake the dead, shaking the whole neighborhood.
Synonyms
775
1.0
Having a very strong, high sound
30
3.5
An extremely loud sound that makes it hard to hear or causes temporary loss of hearing
28
7.1
Making a loud, rough, and unpleasant sound that hurts your ears
Antonyms
How Loud
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase is a straightforward hyperbolic composition: 'fit' (suitable/capable) + 'to wake the dead' (literally bringing the deceased out of sleep) yields the sense 'so loud or disruptive that it could wake the dead.' This exaggerated meaning is directly inferable from the constituents and follows common cross-linguistic hyperbole patterns, so a B1 learner who knows the words would likely understand it.
Etymology
Fit to wake the dead comes from an old image of a sound so strong, like church bells or thunder, that it could wake people in their graves. That's why it now means 'extremely loud'.