awaken

From Middle English awakenen or awaknen, from Old English awæcnan or awæcnian, from a- plus wæcnan or wæcnian.

• IPA^(key): /əˈweɪkən/

• Audio (Southern England):

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• Rhymes: -eɪkən

awaken (third-person singular simple present awakens, present participle awakening, simple past and past participle awakened) (but see usage notes)

1. (transitive) To cause to become awake.

   Synonyms: knock up, uprouse; see also Thesaurus:awaken

   • 1973, New Birth, “Wildflower”, in It's Been A Long Time:

     Be careful how you touch her, she'll awaken / As sleep's the only freedom all that she knows / And when you walk into her eyes, you won't believe / The way she's always paying for a debt she never owes

2. (intransitive) To stop sleeping; awake.

   Synonyms: awake, stir; see also Thesaurus:wake

   Antonym: fall asleep

   Each morning he awakens with a smile on his face.

   • 2025 October 25, Stephen Cave, “Threescore and many more”, in FT Weekend, Life & Arts, page 9:

     For this growing set, the idea that we might have a fixed, natural lifespan is pure defeatism—“deathism” even, a spell from which we must awaken to realise our full potential.

3. (transitive, figurative) To bring into action (something previously dormant); to stimulate.

   Synonyms: animate, energize; see also Thesaurus:enliven

   Awaken your entrepreneurial spirit!

   We hope to awaken your interest in our programme.

   • 1951 April, Stirling Everard, “A Matter of Pedigree”, in Railway Magazine, number 600, page 273:

     On the other hand, the self-cleaning smokebox belongs to the latter-day period of the L.M.S.R., when the visiting U.S.A. 2-8-0s of the war had awakened an interest in such things.

   • 1984, 20:05 from the start, in Dune‎^[1] (Science Fiction), →OCLC:

     I'll miss the sea. But a person needs new experiences. They draw something deep inside, allowing him to grow. Without change, something sleeps inside us and seldom awakens. The sleeper must awaken.

4. (theology) To call to a sense of sin.
5. (rare) past participle of awake
   • 1665, Robert Hooke, Micrographia:

     [This ant] I ſuffered to lye above an hour in the Spirit; and after I had taken it out, and put its body and legs into a natural poſture, remained moveleſs about an hour; but then , upon a ſudden, as if it had been awaken out of a drunken ſleep, it ſuddenly reviv'd and ran away...

6. (transitive, figurative) To cause to become aware.
7. (intransitive, figurative) To become aware.

   I suddenly awoke to the possibilities of the new invention.

   • 1905 May 21, “Woes of Tax Assessor Many and Laughable. By a Deputy.”, in Worker’s Magazine: For the Man Who Works with Hand or Brain (The Sunday Plain Dealer), Cleveland, Oh., →OCLC, page [4], column 4:

     [S]he pointedly remarked that they had just moved to the city a month previous, that they were dissatisfied, and would return to Hoosierdom in June. I was completely taken in, and departed without making the assessment. However, when whole flatsful began to make similar explanations under similar circumstances, I awoke to the fact that I had been bluffed.

• This verb, for many speakers, has been essentially conflated with the verb awake, and has adopted parts of awake’s conjugation. awaken remains the bare form (and also in awakens and awakening), but its simple past and past participle are replaced by those of awake: awoke and awoken, respectively. For many others, awaken has simply supplanted awake, without adopting conjugational elements from awake.