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Past tense of “awake”
🐓 To stop sleeping; to wake up.
Number 102 of 175 by frequency — common in reading and television, less so in your own speech, and the participle is the past plus -n. Recognising it is the priority.
Mistakes people make with “awake”
Not “awaked”. Awake does not take -ed — the past simple is awoke, however regular it feels to add the ending.
Not “have awoke”. After have, has or had the verb switches to its third form: I have awoken, never I have awoke. This one survives into quite advanced English, so it is worth over-learning.
Do not confuse it with…
In ordinary speech people say woke up, not awoke. Keep awake for writing that wants the extra formality.
The participle grows out of the past
awake · awoke · awoken. Notice where the third form comes from: not from the base, but from the past simple with an -n stuck on the end. awoke → awoken.
That is the easier half of this family, because you only have to remember one strange word and then add a letter. Wear · wore · worn and swear · swore · sworn work the same way.
Either way the ending does the work for you. A form ending in -n needs have, has, had or a passive be in front of it; without one it stands alone as the past — She awoke before dawn.
- Past participle: He has just awoken from a deep sleep.
The same pattern — the -en finishers — runs through 48 verbs:
Practise it
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