# awake

Pronunciation: say "uh-WAYK" /əˈweɪk/

## Adjective

1. In a conscious state rather than asleep.
   - Simple: Not sleeping, and knowing what is going on.
   - _I lay awake for hours, listening to the rain on the roof._
   - _Strong coffee keeps me awake through the late shift._
3. Alert to something and aware of what is happening.
   - Simple: Noticing and understanding 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._

## Verb

2. To become conscious again after a period of sleep.
   - Simple: To wake up after being asleep.
   - _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._
4. To bring someone out of sleep.
   - Simple: To make someone stop sleeping.
   - _A sudden knock at the door awoke him just after three._
   - _The nurses move quietly so they don't awake patients during the night._
5. To become active after a time of inaction or dormancy.
   - Simple: To start being active after a long quiet time.
   - _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._
6. To make someone aware of something.
   - Simple: To make someone notice or understand 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._
7. To stir someone or something out of a state of inaction or dormancy.
   - Simple: To make someone or something start to act after a long quiet time.
   - _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._
8. To stir up or bring out something that has been lying hidden or inactive.
   - Simple: To wake up something, like a feeling, that was hidden or quiet.
   - _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._

## Origin

**Meanings 1, 3** — From Middle English awake, a shortened form of awaken ("awakened, awake"), the past participle of the Middle English verb awaken ("to awaken"). Compare Saterland Frisian woak, German Low German waak and German wach, all meaning "awake".
**Meanings 2, 4–8** — From Middle English awaken and awakien, from Old English āwacan and āwacian. It can be analysed as a- + wake.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/awake (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).