awaken

verb

1. 1

   To cause to become awake.

   Be careful how you touch her, she'll awaken / As sleep's the only freedom all that she knows / And when you walk into her eyes, you won't believe / The way she's always paying for a debt she never owes

2. 2

   To stop sleeping; awake.

   Each morning he awakens with a smile on his face.

   For this growing set, the idea that we might have a fixed, natural lifespan is pure defeatism—“deathism” even, a spell from which we must awaken to realise our full potential.

3. 3

   figurativeTo bring into action (something previously dormant); to stimulate.

   Awaken your entrepreneurial spirit!

   We hope to awaken your interest in our programme.

   He tries to awaken in them self-respect and reverence for their own spiritual culture.

   On the other hand, the self-cleaning smokebox belongs to the latter-day period of the L.M.S.R., when the visiting U.S.A. 2-8-0s of the war had awakened an interest in such things.

4. 4

   Of something previously dormant, to become active.

   I'll miss the sea. But a person needs new experiences. They draw something deep inside, allowing him to grow. Without change, something sleeps inside us and seldom awakens. The sleeper must awaken.

5. 5

   To call to a sense of sin.

6. 6

   figurativeTo cause to become aware.

7. 7

   figurativeTo become aware.

   I suddenly awoke to the possibilities of the new invention.

   [S]he pointedly remarked that they had just moved to the city a month previous, that they were dissatisfied, and would return to Hoosierdom in June. I was completely taken in, and departed without making the assessment. However, when whole flatsful began to make similar explanations under similar circumstances, I awoke to the fact that I had been bluffed.

8. 8

   Also a form of awakerarepast participle of awake

   [This ant] I ſuffered to lye above an hour in the Spirit; and after I had taken it out, and put its body and legs into a natural poſture, remained moveleſs about an hour; but then , upon a ſudden, as if it had been awaken out of a drunken ſleep, it ſuddenly reviv'd and ran away...

Forms

past tense

awakened

past participle

awakened

present participle

awakening

third person singular

awakens