woken
Syllables: wo·ken/ˈwəʊ.kən//ˈwoʊ.kən/
woken is the past participle of wake.
Meaning of wake
Verb
wake (third-person singular simple present wakes, present participle waking, simple past woke or waked, past participle woken or waked or (now colloquial) woke)
- (often followed by up) To stop sleeping.
- I woke up at four o'clock this morning.
- (often followed by up) To make somebody stop sleeping; to rouse from sleep.
- The neighbour's car alarm woke me from a strange dream.
- To put in motion or action; to arouse; to excite.
- Not for my life, leſt fierce remembrance wake
My ſudden rage to tear thee joint by joint.1671, John Milton, “Samson Agonistes, […].”, in Paradise Regain’d. A Poem. In IV Books. To which is Added, Samson Agonistes, London: […] J[ohn] M[acock] for John Starkey […], →OCLC, page 59
- Synonyms:
- awaken, rouse, abet, actuate, goose, fuel, light a fire under, send, sting, bring about
- Not for my life, leſt fierce remembrance wake
- To be excited or roused up; to be stirred up from a dormant, torpid, or inactive state; to be active.
- and gentle Aires due at thir hour
To fan the Earth now wak'd,1667, John Milton, “Book IX”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a]nd by Robert Boulter […]; [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], →OCLC; republished...
- and gentle Aires due at thir hour
- To watch, or sit up with, at night, as a dead body.
- Dougal said that being alone with the dead on that floor of the tower (for naebody cared to wake Sir Robert Redgauntlet like another corpse) he had never daured^([sic]) to answer the call, but that now his conscience checked him for neglecting his duty; […]1824, Sir Walter Scott, Redgauntlet
- To be or remain awake; not to sleep.
- The father waketh for the daughter when no man knoweth, and the care for her taketh away sleepe;1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Ecclesiasticus 42:9
Verb
woken (third-person singular simple present wokens, present participle wokening, simple past and past participle wokened)
- To make or become woke or woker.
- The “wokening” industry swallowed Orr's latest incarnation—the new, improved Rory Rabineau—as a perfect antidote to the perceived poison of his uninsurable “mental instability.”2022, Bruce Wagner, ROAR: American Master, The Oral Biography of Roger Orr
- Which is why progressivism ain't no religion; it's a cult. Instead of the Ten Commandments, it's political correctness. Instead of any meaningful spiritual awakening, it's a performative wokening.2022, Dave Rubin, Don't Burn This Country
Forms of woken
| third-person singular present | wokens |
|---|---|
| present participle | wokening |
| past participle | wokened |
| past | wokened |
Origin of woken
Morphologically woke + -n.
From woke + -en.
Words formed from woken
Phrases with woken
Words that rhyme with woken
Questions about woken
- What does woken mean?
- Woken means to make or become woke or woker.
- What is woken the past participle of?
- Woken is the past participle of wake.
- What part of speech is woken?
- Woken is a verb.
- How do you pronounce woken?
- Woken is pronounced /ˈwəʊ.kən/ (UK).
- What is the past tense of woken?
- The past tense of woken is wokened.
Words near woken in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: woken (page history and authors); wake (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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Pvanp7-woken.wav, LL-Q1860 (eng)-Persent101-woken.wav.
Cite this entry: “woken.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/woken. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.