Word.ws English Dictionary

awoken

/əˈwəʊkn̩/

awoken is the past participle of awake.

awoken is the misspelling of awaken.

Meaning of awake

Verb

awake (third-person singular simple present awakes, present participle awaking, simple past awoke or (rare) awaked, past participle awoken or (rare) awaked or (rare) awoke or (rare) awaken)

  1. (intransitive, predicative) To become conscious after having slept.
    • Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night,
      Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight:
      And Lo! the Hunter of the East has caught
      The Sultán's Turret in a Noose of light.1859, Edward Fitzgerald, The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám: The Astronomer-Poet of Persia, page 1
  2. (predicative, transitive) To cause (somebody) to stop sleeping.
    • Thenne she called the heremyte syre Vlfyn I am a gentylwoman that wold speke with the knyght whiche is with yow / Thenne the good man awaked Galahad / & badde hym aryse and speke with a gentylwoman that semeth hath grete nede of yow / Thenne Galahad wente to her & asked her what she wold1485, Sir Thomas Malory, “primum”, in Le Morte Darthur, book XVII
    Antonyms:
    put to sleep
  3. (predicative, transitive) To make aware of something.
  4. (predicative, transitive) To excite or to stir up something latent.
  5. (figuratively, predicative, transitive) To rouse from a state of inaction or dormancy.
  6. (figuratively, intransitive, predicative) To come out of a state of inaction or dormancy.
    • The national spirit again awoke.1867-1879, Edward Augustus Freeman, The History of the Norman Conquest of England

See all 10 meanings of awake

Meaning of awaken

Verb

awaken (third-person singular simple present awakens, present participle awakening, simple past and past participle awakened)

  1. (transitive) 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 owes1973, New Birth, “Wildflower”, in It's Been A Long Time
    Synonyms:
    knock up, uprouse
  2. (intransitive) To stop sleeping; awake.
    • Each morning he awakens with a smile on his face.
    Antonyms:
    fall asleep
  3. (figuratively, transitive) To bring into action (something previously dormant); to stimulate.
    • Awaken your entrepreneurial spirit!
  4. (intransitive) 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.1984, 20:05 from the start, in Dune (Science Fiction), →OCLC
  5. To call to a sense of sin.
  6. (figuratively, transitive) To cause to become aware.

See all 7 meanings of awaken

Synonyms of awoken

Origin of awoken

Morphologically awoke + -n.

Words formed from awoken

Words that rhyme with awoken

Questions about awoken

What is awoken the past participle of?
Awoken is the past participle of awake.
How do you pronounce awoken?
Awoken is pronounced /əˈwəʊkn̩/.

Words near awoken in the dictionary

  1. awnry
  2. awns
  3. awntient
  4. awny
  5. awoke
  6. awoken
  7. awokening
  8. awokenings
  9. awokest
  10. awol
  11. awols

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: awoken (page history and authors); awake (page history and authors); awaken (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-awoken.wav, LL-Q1860 (eng)-Wodencafe-awoken.wav.

Cite this entry: “awoken.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/awoken. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.