What is the meaning of the phrase to "wake up dead"

Question

There are two examples I can think of, both music related.  The first is "Is anybody going to San Antone" by Charley Pride:  Sleepin' under a table in a roadside park, a man could wake up dead.
The other is the title song from a bootleg album by Jimi Hendrix: "Woke Up This Morning and Found Myself Dead".
There are other references that I'm not familiar with but found by searching - a TV show "Woke Up Dead", for example.
I've always assumed it meant hungover or otherwise ailing, but I'm not sure.

Pete · Accepted Answer

It's a way of saying that a person might die in his sleep, and thus never wake up at all.

Cascabel · Answer

The best (?!) explanation I have seen of this saying comes from  Scary Movie 3 (2003)...

Mahalik : I heard Jamal from 90th street watched that tape last week and this mornin' he woke up dead!
CJ : How the hell do you wake up dead?
Mahalik : Cause' you're alive when you go to sleep.
CJ : So you're telling me you can go to bed dead and wake up alive?
Mahalik : You can't go to bed dead! That shit would've been redundant.
CJ : No it would'nt cause' you can go to bed and not be dead, and you can die and not be in the bed.
Mahalik : But you are in the bed. That's how you wake up dead in the first place fool!
CJ : Damn! that's some quantum shit right there man! You should be teaching classes!

It's an American quip that goes back quite a few years, and usually describes dying in your sleep. For silliness, it probably ranks right up there with

I literally died!

jmoreno · Answer

Topper: George and Marion, waking up dead: https://youtu.be/qt1UDSilFxg
After a car crash (but Marion was sleeping before the crash), still...

Peter Fox · Answer

This is nothing to do with dying in one's sleep.  It's a contradiction used as a warning to 'take care or else!' A bit like 'sleep with the fishes'. Take care or you might die rather suddenly without knowing how.
It's not a 1st person thing.  "On Thursday I woke up dead." is a distortion for humorous effect.

alephzero · Answer

The origin of this is the Bible.
The King James (1611) version of 2 Kings 19:35 reads

And it came to pass that night, that the angel of the LORD went out,
and smote in the camp of the Assyrians an hundred fourscore and five
thousand: and when they arose early in the morning, behold, they were
all dead corpses.

AFAIK this is perfectly idiomatic in ancient Hebrew, where "when they arose early in the morning" simply means "on the next day", but the literal translation is rather humorous in English.
Some modern translations sidestep this by taking "they" to mean the Israelites and not the dead Assyrians, but that is grasping at straws IMO.

What is the meaning of the phrase to "wake up dead"

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