Awakening

How to spell awakening

9 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce awakening

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does awakening mean?

1. nounA coming into awareness, understanding, or recognition of something previously unnoticed.
2. nounThe act or moment of rousing from sleep.

Awakening in a sentence

• The documentary triggered a slow awakening to the scale of the problem.

• The early awakening left him groggy for the rest of the morning.

• Losing the contract was a rude awakening for the whole sales team.

• A sudden awakening at three in the morning is common during stressful weeks.

Where does awakening come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word is thoroughly native, descending from the Old English verb awæcnan, meaning 'to arise, to come to life, to wake up'. That verb was built from an intensifying prefix a- combined with wæcnan, 'to become awake', which itself traces back to the same Germanic root that gives us the everyday words 'wake' and 'watch'. The literal idea was always physical: a person or creature rising out of sleep. Over the medieval period English speakers extended it figuratively to the rousing of the mind or spirit, so that by the 1600s an 'awakening' could mean a sudden coming into knowledge, faith, or self-awareness, as in a religious or political awakening. The spelling trap lives in the unstressed middle: the silent feel of the second vowel and the single k followed by -en before -ing, which tempts writers toward doubling or dropping letters.

How the word is built

• a- (intensive Old English prefix)
• wak (root: to become awake, from Old English wacan)
• -en (verb-forming suffix)
• -ing (noun/gerund suffix)