wake up and smell the coffee

Probably a humorous elaboration of wake up (“to become more aware of a real-life situation; to concentrate on the matter in hand”), alluding to the fact that coffee is often consumed at breakfast time after waking up in the morning. The term was popularized by the American writer Esther Pauline “Eppie” Lederer (1918–2002), who used the pen name Ann Landers, in the syndicated newspaper advice column Ask Ann Landers.

• "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, […]"

• open one's eyes
• take the hint
• wake up and smell the ashes
• wake up and smell the decaf
• wake up and smell the roses