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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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The 44-year-old victim was sleeping in his car when he was awakened by a group of juveniles, one armed with a black revolver, police said.
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Oh May Day, your sunshine awakens the landscape setting it ablaze in vibrant color.
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Our firefighters at Station 82 were awakened at 2 am last week to a person seeking treatment for her pet Raccoon.
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Better Angels was launched in 2016 with the aim of awakening America’s citizenry from its partisan nightmare.
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That means microbes, seeds and spores, frozen in a dormant state, could awaken with a little warming.
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Arnautovic then headed another good opening over before United awakened from their slumber.
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But now, three and a half years since its last major outburst, Steamboat has awakened, spouting three times in the last six weeks, reports Alex Horton at the Washington Post.
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After awakening from this dream, McKinley instructed American diplomats to impose on Spain a treaty by which the Philippines became an American territory.
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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