Sarah FerrellSelwyn Raab
Did you know?
The Past Tense Forms of Awake and Awaken
Awake and awaken are two distinct verbs that mean the same thing. In other words, they're synonyms, and in the present tense they each behave the way English verbs typically behave:
The cat awakes at dawn.
The cat awakens at dawn.
Things get trickier in the past tense.
Our modern verb awake is the result of the long-ago melding of two older verbs. These verbs were very similar, but one had regular past tense forms (like play: played, has played) and the other had irregular past tense forms (like take: took, has taken).
When the two verbs melded into the modern awake (which was a process over many years), things got complicated, resulting ultimately in the following grammatically permissible sentences:
The cat awaked at dawn.
The cat awoke at dawn.
The cat was awaked by the mouse at dawn.
The cat was awoken by the mouse at dawn.
Note, though, that at this point, these are the most common:
The cat awoke at dawn.
The cat was awoken by the mouse at dawn.
That's the story of awake. Fortunately awaken (which was originally one of the past tense forms of awake) is simpler. It's a regular verb, which means it has the usual past tense forms:
The cat awakened at dawn.
The cat was awakened at dawn by a mouse.
As if all this weren't complicated enough, awake is also an adjective:
Because of the cat, I too am now awake.
For a detailed discussion of the history of these words, please see the The Grammatical History of 'Awaken' / 'Awoken' / 'Awakened'.
Synonyms
Examples of awake in a Sentence
Julia Michie Bruckner, Discover Magazine, 5 Apr. 2024
Remember last summer, when people in New York, Washington, and Chicago awoke to plumes of orange smoke blanketing their skies from the drift of Canadian wildfires?
—Morgan Haefner, Quartz, 26 Feb. 2024
Early one morning, Nat awoke to see Ringo engaged in passionate motion with the edge of the mattress.
—David Frum, The Atlantic, 21 Mar. 2024
The assignment The journalists awoke on Jan. 7 to news of an airstrike on the home of the Abu al-Naja family, south of Khan Younis, according to a photographer for the Palestine Today television channel, Amer Abu Amr, who was also at the scene that day.
—Hazem Balousha, Washington Post, 19 Mar. 2024
In a social media post last October, Adele explained the drill of two shows each weekend had awoken something in her.
—Lars Brandle, Billboard, 31 Jan. 2024
In New Hampshire, apple growers who went to bed with orchards full of pink blossoms awoke to petals turning brown.
—Zoë Schlanger, The Atlantic, 11 Mar. 2024
On an autumn morning in 1986, his 11th birthday, Edwin Lard awoke in a house with no grown-ups.
—Olivia Diaz, Washington Post, 9 Mar. 2024
For Tameka Bradley Hobbs, the Library Regional Manager for the African American Research Library and Cultural Center, her first Black history class at FAMU awoke in her a passion for the subject itself.
—C. Isaiah Smalls Ii, Miami Herald, 1 Mar. 2024
Melissa Chan, NBC News, 27 Mar. 2024
The patient is often awake, under local anesthesia, with sedation similar to that used for dental procedures.
—Discover Magazine, 27 Mar. 2024
Like the walls of his tenement house, lined with calendar clippings, the museum that bears his name is born of curiosity, of being awake to the world, and terribly, marvelously interested.
—Angelica Aboulhosn, Smithsonian Magazine, 27 Mar. 2024
Marquis Neal, 48, who lives in the Turner Station community near the bridge, said the crash jolted him awake.
—Danny Nguyen, Washington Post, 27 Mar. 2024
This meant that Campione had to stay awake during the surgery and engage parts of her brain used to control her speech — which lit up in an orange and pink color on the QuickTome technology map of her brain — showing doctors which areas to keep intact.
—Vanessa Etienne, Peoplemag, 21 Mar. 2024
Between 2013 and 2015, for 24 hours a day for seven days total, participants of the new study wore activity trackers on their wrists to monitor daily step count and time spent being sedentary (sitting or lying down while awake).
—Kristen Rogers, CNN, 6 Mar. 2024
The face is delicate with complicated anatomy and having an awake patient risks the patient moving around during the surgery, which adds more risk.
—Meirav Devash, Allure, 29 Feb. 2024
But this is also a time in which many parents lie awake at night wondering if tomorrow will be the day their tween boy discovers Andrew Tate.
—Mark Harris Keita Morimoto, New York Times, 27 Feb. 2024
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'awake.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
Word History
Verb and Adjective
Middle English awaken (from Old English awacan, onwacan, from a- entry 1, on + wacan to awake) & awakien, from Old English awacian, from a- entry 1 + wacian to be awake — more at wake
Verb
before the 12th century, in the meaning defined at intransitive sense 1
Adjective
13th century, in the meaning defined above
Phrases Containing awake
Articles Related to awake
Dictionary Entries Near awake
Cite this Entry
“Awake.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/awake. Accessed 19 Apr. 2024.
Copy Citation
Kids Definition
awake
2 of 2 adjective
More from Merriam-Webster on awake
Nglish: Translation of awake for Spanish Speakers
Britannica English: Translation of awake for Arabic Speakers
Share