await

uh-WAYT/əˈweɪt/

8 meanings of await

1
verbformaltransitive
To wait for the arrival or occurrence of someone or something.
We await your decision before confirming the venue.
Thousands await the jury's verdict outside the courthouse.
Similaranticipate, expect
Note
Formal English for waiting, at home in a letter: I await your reply. It takes its object directly, so you await a reply but wait for one, and await for blends the two. Milton's Gabriel sits awaiting night, and the American novelist Winston Churchill's The Celebrity (1897) has Farrar awaiting the narrator at a railway station. The construction is the same in both, two centuries apart.
2
verbtransitive
To lie ahead for someone as something in store or waiting to happen.
A warm welcome awaits every guest at the lodge.
Great rewards await those who finish the trail.
Note
Here the sentence turns around. The thing in store is the subject, and the person it lies ahead of is the object. Rewards await the good, and in Milton "some further change awaits us nigh." The pattern suits rewards, welcomes and fates, things that sit ready before anyone arrives. Compare waiting for something, where the one who waits is the subject.
3
verbtransitive
To expect something to come or happen.
Forecasters await a major storm by the weekend.
She awaits news of the promotion any day now.
Similarexpect, anticipate, foresee
4
verbintransitive
To wait; to remain in a state of waiting.
Please await here until your name is called.
The guests awaited patiently in the great hall.
Similarwait, remain, stay
5
verbtransitive or intransitive
To serve or attend on someone, waiting on them and seeing to their needs.
Two footmen await the duke throughout dinner.
The servants awaited at the long table during the feast.
Similarattend, serve

Less common meanings

6
verbobsoleteintransitive
To keep watch and observe, looking on attentively at what is happening, with no object stated.
Note
The meaning closest to the word's origin, Old Northern French awaitier, "to lie in wait for, watch, observe". That verb often had a hostile edge. Watching here means keeping an eye on someone, not passing time until something comes. The suspicious looking-out survives in the noun for watchfulness, while waiting for something kept the patience and lost the keen eye.
7
nounobsolete
A waiting in readiness for someone; an ambush.
Note
Obsolete now, and best kept for writing that imitates older English. In modern prose the idea is expressed with lie in wait or ambush. The noun keeps the hostile edge of the French verb behind the watching sense, whose meaning was "to lie in wait for". The ambush is that original menace made into a thing.
8
nounobsolete
Watching or watchfulness, including the suspicious observation of a person.
Also, madame, syte you well that there be many men spekith of oure love in this courte, and have you and me gretely in awayte, as thes Sir Aggravayne and Sir Mordred.
1470, Thomas Malory, Le Morte Darthur
Note
This noun lived inside the phrase in await: to have someone in await was to keep them under suspicious watch. Malory's Aggravayne and Mordred have the lovers "gretely in awayte," and in Spenser a guard "watcht in close awayt" all night. The suspicion is inherited, because the Old Northern French verb behind it meant to lie in wait for, often with hostile intent. The use is obsolete; modern English says watchfulness instead.

Practice

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Origin

From Middle English awaiten, from Old Northern French awaitier ("to lie in wait for, watch, observe"), originally with an especially hostile sense; this came from a- ("to") plus waitier ("to watch").