awaking

Pluralawakings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of awake.

   Awaking in a strange hotel room, he needed a moment to remember where he was.

   The speech succeeded in awaking old fears among the voters.

   Note

   The silent e of awake drops before -ing, just as make becomes making. As a participle it can open a clause (Awaking at dawn, they broke camp) or follow be; as a gerund it often sits after a preposition, as in on awaking. It serves both waking yourself and waking something else, including the figurative stirring of fears or memories.

2. 2
   nouncountable

   An awakening, whether from sleep, from a state of inaction, or into awareness of something.

   The spring festival celebrates the town's yearly awaking after a long, quiet winter.

   Reading the letters brought a slow, painful awaking to what his father had suffered.

   Similarawakening

   Note

   The noun behaves like any countable noun: it takes an article and adjectives (a slow, painful awaking) and has the plural awakings. That is how to tell it from the gerund of awake, which takes an object instead (awaking old fears). Awakening means the same and differs only by its extra syllable, so either serves.

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