Sarah FerrellSelwyn Raab
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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
David Oliver, USA TODAY, 18 Apr. 2024
When Moura was filming in Atlanta two years ago, the stomach-turning threat inherent in the line awoke a latent nightmare in the actor.
—Seija Rankin, The Hollywood Reporter, 28 Mar. 2024
Rainbow Bear follows the adorable journey of Little Bear, who awakes from his winter's slumber hungry.
—Sari Hitchins, Parents, 15 Mar. 2024
Her parents, meanwhile, were relieved that their daughter awoke without any health problems.
—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
Sara Netzley, EW.com, 16 Apr. 2024
The first victims, Christopher Rhoden Sr. and his cousin Gary Rhoden, were awake when shot just near the front door of Chris Rhoden's trailer home on Union Hill Road.
—The Enquirer, 15 Apr. 2024
The fact was: if the husband had been fully awake, he’d have been stunned and mystified by his own behavior.
—Joyce Carol Oates, The New Yorker, 15 Apr. 2024
By the mid-1930s, researchers had observed the striking differences between the awake and asleep EEG.
—Giridhar Kalamangalam, Discover Magazine, 4 Apr. 2024
Syu-Heng Lai was 11 when the quake struck and can still recall how the temblor shook him awake at his family’s apartment in TaiPei and nearly threw him out of bed.
—Evan Bush, NBC News, 4 Apr. 2024
Mothers stay awake at night, fearing that their sons will be arrested or killed.
—Sufian Taha, Washington Post, 22 Mar. 2024
The frantic phone calls jolted Earl Schneider awake.
—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
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.
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Dictionary Entries Near awake
Cite this Entry
“Awake.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/awake. Accessed 23 Apr. 2024.
Copy CitationKids Definition
awake
2 of 2 adjective
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