680: awake versus awaken Oct 18, 2016

It is easy to confuse the words 'awake' and 'awaken', especially in their present forms. What makes this especially tricky is that even though there are some definitions that attempt to match the conventional uses, the two uses are not very different. Both have transitive and intransitive meanings, so whether the word takes a direct object isn't generally too helpful, but generally 'awake' has less extreme meanings, and also tends to be used only relating to sleep rather than existence as a whole, so while one might awake on a quiet Sunday morning, some mystical powers can be awaken. Other related words, 'wake' and 'waken' are a bit easier to distinguish, most notably because 'waken' is transitive.