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Examples of awaken in a Sentence
She usually awakens several times during the night.
A loud noise awakened her.
Recent Examples of awaken from the Web
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And, of course, there is always the chance that Martian methanogens still slumber in the planet’s subsurface even today, periodically awakening during clement periods to produce their gaseous calling-card.
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More than just a concealer, this two-in-one formula of makeup and treatment aims to hydrate and awaken the undereye area, as well as to reduce the appearance of dark circles and pesky wrinkles.
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Fleming's boyfriend answered the door and awakened Fleming.
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Detroit’s near-instant moment of mass android awakening feels incredibly unearned compared to the complex explorations of artificial psychology in similar fiction (Westworld, Blade Runner, etc, etc).
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But doing so eventually awakens much darker concerns for Toller.
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Many hope that the Union development — and a proposed streetcar expansion to Berkley Riverfront Park — will awaken an underutilized slice of Kansas City's urban core.
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The Jungle had the same effect in awakening knowledge of industrial unrest and dangerous workplace conditions.
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This reads as a not-so-subtle reference to the hosts' awakening consciousness and aggressive uprising.
These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'awaken.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
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'.
Origin and Etymology of awaken
Middle English, from Old English awæcnian, from a- + wæcnian to waken
NEW! Time Traveler
First Known Use: before 12th century
in the meaning defined above
See Words from the same yearAWAKEN Defined for English Language Learners
AWAKEN Defined for Kids
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See words that rhyme with awaken Thesaurus: All synonyms and antonyms for awaken Spanish Central: Translation of awaken Britannica English: Translation of awaken for Arabic speakers
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