Today's Word "Wake"
Published in Vocabulary
wake \WEYK\ (verb) - 1 : To regain or cause someone to regain consciousness from sleep; 2 : to become aware of something previously ignored.
"By the time Lemmy awoke to the changes of the 60s, it was the mid 70s and he was still ironing creases in his jeans."
Today's word comes from Old English wacan, "to wake up" and wacian "to be awake, keep watch," both of which developed into "wake." They are related to "watch," which comes from Middle English "wacchen," derived from Old English waccan "to watch, be awake." So, the senses of being awake, watching, keeping a vigil (or watch), have long been related in English. These words are unrelated to "wake" as the wake of a boat; this word probably was borrowed from a Scandinavian language. The same root, *weg-, is found in Latin vigil "watchful, aware, alert." The first usage problem associated with today's word is its forms; they are: wake (they wake up), woke (they woke up), woken (they have woken up); its mate, "awake," conjugates similarly: "awake, awoke, awoken." Two other, more poetic variants of this same verb are "waken" and "awaken," both regular ([a]waken, [a]wakened, [a]wakened). "Wake" in the sense of "keep a vigil or watch" comes from the same source but today is a differentit is a regular verb: "wake, waked, waked" (with someone sick or dead).
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