awaken

present singular third person awakens · participle present awakening · participle past awakened · past awakened

1. transitiveTo cause to become awake.

   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

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

   Synonyms: knock up, uprouse

2. intransitiveTo stop sleeping; awake.

   Each morning he awakens with a smile on his face.

   1 more example

   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.

   2025 October 25, Stephen Cave, “Threescore and many more”, in FT Weekend (Life & Arts section), London: The Financial Times Ltd., →ISSN, →OCLC, page 9

   Synonyms: awake, stir, abraid, arise, arouse, awake, get up, rise · Antonyms: fall asleep

3. figurativelytransitiveTo bring into action (something previously dormant); to stimulate.

   Awaken your entrepreneurial spirit!

   3 more examples

   We hope to awaken your interest in our programme.

   He tries to awaken in them self-respect and reverence for their own spiritual culture.

   1929, Abraham Zevi Idelsohn, Jewish Music: Its Historical Development, page 446

   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.

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

   Synonyms: animate, energize, animate, arouse, beghast, leaven, bright, brighten

4. intransitiveOf something previously dormant, to become active.

   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.

   1984, 20:05 from the start, in Dune (Science Fiction), →OCLC

5. lifestyleTo call to a sense of sin.
6. participlepastrarepast participle of awake

   [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...

   1665, Robert Hooke, Micrographia

7. figurativelytransitiveTo cause to become aware.
8. figurativelyintransitiveTo become aware.

   I suddenly awoke to the possibilities of the new invention.

   1 more example

   [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.

   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