Awaken

How to spell awaken

6 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce awaken

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does awaken mean?

1. verbTo wake someone from sleep, or to stop sleeping oneself.
2. verbTo stir up a feeling, memory, or awareness that was previously dormant.

Awaken in a sentence

• A loud car alarm can awaken the whole street at night.

• The documentary may awaken public concern about plastic waste.

• The nurse tried to gently awaken the sleeping patient for his medication.

• A single old photograph can awaken memories of a childhood holiday.

Where does awaken come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word descends directly from Old English awæcnan, a native Anglo-Saxon verb meaning 'to spring into being' or 'to wake up'. It was built from the intensive prefix a- joined to wæcnan, which meant 'to become awake', the same Germanic root that gives us 'wake' and 'watch'. The literal early sense was simply rousing from sleep, but from the medieval period onward English writers also used it figuratively for stirring feelings, memories, or awareness into life. The -en ending is an old verb-forming suffix, the same one seen in 'strengthen' and 'frighten', and it is the part that most often trips up the spelling, since the unstressed final syllable sounds like a vague 'un'. Because it is a genuinely old inherited word rather than a later Latin or French borrowing, its spelling has stayed close to its plain Germanic roots.

How the word is built

• a- (Old English intensive prefix)
• wak- (from wacan: to wake)
• -en (verb-forming suffix)