awake

Formsawakes, awaking, awoke, awoken

1. 1
   not sleepingadjectivenot before a noun

   In a conscious state rather than asleep.

   I lay awake for hours, listening to the rain on the roof.

   Strong coffee keeps me awake through the late shift.

   Similarconscious

   Oppositeasleep, unconscious

   Note

   The adjective began as a past participle: Middle English awake is a shortened awaken, "awakened", and German wach is a cousin. It belongs after a verb, as asleep does: people are awake, lie awake, stay awake. It takes no more or most; wide awake does the stressing, and so works too, as when Bill Oddie found himself "so awake and agitated" at quarter to six.

2. 2
   out of sleepverbintransitivenot before a noun

   To become conscious again after a period of sleep.

   Travelers who awake on the night train often have no idea which country they are in.

   He had awoken twice before dawn, each time from the same dream.

   Similarwake, awaken, waken, stir, rise

   Note

   The verb is old, from Old English āwacan, which reads as wake with the prefix a-. Its past is awoke and its participle awoken, with awaked a rare regular alternative for both. As a bare command it can open a poem, as in Edward Fitzgerald's Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám (1859): "Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night..."

3. 3
   awareadjectivefigurativelynot before a noun

   Alert to something and aware of what is happening.

   Few voters were awake to how much the new rules would cost them.

   Good editors stay awake to every shift in what their readers want.

   Similaralert, aware, watchful, vigilant, observant

   Oppositeoblivious, heedless

   Note

   It is the mind that is awake here, usually to something named after to: awake to the possibility of a decline in sales, or "perfectly awake to the business before him," as The Sportsman's Magazine put it in 1845. Martin Luther King Jr. used it without an object in 1965, urging graduates to remain awake through a social revolution.

4. 4
   out of sleepverbtransitivenot before a noun

   To bring someone out of sleep.

   A sudden knock at the door awoke him just after three.

   The nurses move quietly so they don't awake patients during the night.

   Similarwake, awaken, rouse, waken, arouse

   Note

   Older writers gave this transitive use past forms that look odd today. In Malory's Le Morte Darthur of 1485 the good man "awaked Galahad" and bade him rise, the regular past that is now rare beside awoke; Robert Hooke's Micrographia of 1665 has an ant stirring "as if it had been awaken," where awoken would stand now.

5. 5
   verbfigurativelyintransitivenot before a noun

   To become active after a time of inaction or dormancy.

   After decades of neglect, the old port district began to awake as artists moved in.

   Old rivalries between the two villages awoke the moment the boundary dispute began.

   Similarrevive, awaken, stir, reawaken

   Note

   Here what wakes is a spirit, a people or a movement rather than a sleeper: in Edward Augustus Freeman's History of the Norman Conquest of England, "the national spirit again awoke." The King James Bible of 1611 makes it a moral summons, "Awake to righteousness, and sin not." When something else does the stirring, the verb takes an object, as in its transitive partner.

6. 6
   make realizeverbtransitivenot before a noun

   To make someone aware of something.

   The report should awake lawmakers to how badly the state's bridges have decayed.

   Her first trip abroad awoke her to how much of the world she had never seen.

   Similarawaken, alert

7. 7
   active againverbfigurativelytransitivenot before a noun

   To stir someone or something out of a state of inaction or dormancy.

   Only a real crisis seemed likely to awake the committee from years of inaction.

   The protest awoke a movement that had been dormant for a generation.

   Similarrouse, awaken, stir, revive, galvanize

8. 8
   hidden feelingsverbtransitivenot before a noun

   To stir up or bring out something that has been lying hidden or inactive.

   A single chord from the piano was enough to awake a longing he thought he had outgrown.

   The debate awoke an old suspicion of outsiders in the community.

   Similarawaken, arouse, stir, rouse, kindle

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