A reader responded to my post about irregular verbs last week to express confusion about when to use “awake” and when to use “wake” (and their various past-tense forms). Well, she’s not alone. I’ve done some dictionary diving and was daunted by the prospect of explaining it all, as to give a proper explanation, you have to go into word origins, transitive and intransitive verb distinctions, and probably other things, none of which I quite had the heart to write about at length today.
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Even Garner, whom I cite near-weekly, acknowledges that these verbs are tricky, especially the past-tense forms.
Luckily, Maeve Maddox, of the Daily Writing Tips blog, has done a bunch of legwork to lay out the details.
In a nutshell, it’s generally ok to use wake or awake as both transitive verbs (a verb that is performed upon an object or, in this case, creature) and intransitive verbs (“I awoke” or “he woke” when the subject of the sentence is the one waking up). Garner provides the following table for the past-tense and past-participial forms:
Present | Past-tense | Past-Participal |
---|---|---|
wake | woke | waked (or woken) |
awake | awoke | awaked (or awoken) |
awaken | awakened | awakened |
wake up | woke up | waked up |
Since there’s so much interchangeability among the verbs, you’re probably usually going to be ok using whichever sounds the best to you (ie, maybe you want two syllables to fit the rhythm of your sentence). Some of the forms do imply shades of meaning, but I don’t know that for most of us, they’re worth fussing over too much. For many more details and examples, head on over to the post I mention above.
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Many thanks for addressing this issue.
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Talk nerdy to me ❤
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Found it interesting but slightly unnecessary since writers are usually readers, or am i mistaken?
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Reblogged this on apensiveonmyown.
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Getting your grammar correct is tricky. Modern day gadgets like computers with tools like spell check have made it worse for us. I can hardly write a sentence without churning out a dozen mistakes. Handwriting has been another casualty in all this. Thanks for these articles.
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And there I was thinking that ‘awake’ was only an adjective! I can’t imagine how I could use it as a verb.
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awaked is new for me. I never knew there was such a word. I was taught- wake, woke woken
Learned something new today
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I’ve never heard anyone use awaked. I think it is also acceptable to use woken up. Correct me if I’m wrong.
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anyone else find a wee bit of irony in a post that criticizes grammar issues but spells “participle” wrong? (;
(I know, the table it comes from another source – but still…)
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A bit…had to double check in case I’d been spelling it incorrectly all these years.
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Hi Daryl, I used to have similar doubts and I’m particularly interested in your words ‘Some of the forms do imply shades of meaning’; Are there any shades of meaning when we use ‘learnt’ and ‘learned’.
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Ilustrativo artículo, sobre la gramática que no deja de ser relativa, según inclusive respecto a lugares o países, donde una misma palabra tienen significado diferente. Pero respecto a verbos creo son la raíz fundamental.
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I notice that people sometimes do not say ” I bought this at a sale?” They put brought instead.
I brought you one of my cakes for tea.
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I am still learning. Many thanks for keeping us awake to the proper use of this verb and the many ways we cna use it.
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Reblogged this on Russell's Rants and Raves and commented:
I never get any of these right. I would blame my Southern heritage but the author of the post is from the South as well. I must be a redneck. 🙂
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Reblogged this on Cheryl Andrews and commented:
Daryl L.L.Houston and Maeve Maddox do an excellent job of explaining the usage of these irregular verbs.
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Definitely need to reblog this on my ESLblog. This question hasn’t come up in class (thankfully I don’t teach much grammar) but it’s a nice tidbit to pull out.
Thanks!
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It’s amazing how many authors will begin a scene with “character X awoke”. I always change it because it sounds so archaic.
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How does grammar expect me to say ‘i got a feeling’ when I’m actually still ‘ getting’ it ?!
#daconfusedgal
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Reblogged this on Finishing My Course.
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I love it !!! Thanks so much, for this article, I feel inspired cuz normally my writing doesn’t look like English :P, I’ll get back to editing my work make it look clearer 😀 !
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dance competition, dance competitions,showstoppers dance competition,headliners dance compition,starquest dance competition,starbound dance competition,list of dance competitions,dance competitions 2012,revolution dance competition,hall of fame dance competition, vip dance competition,kar dance competition Thanks for that awesome posting. It saved MUCH time 🙂
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