Wake vs. Awaken

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Sally Rice.

Hi, Sally. Where are you calling from?

Bozeman, Montana.

Bozeman.

Well, welcome to the show, Sally.

What can we do for you?

Well, I recently got a Fitbit.

Oh.

And one of the things that the Fitbit does is tell you how well you sleep.

And so there’s a sidebar on the screen that you can pull up on your computer,

And it says number of minutes of sleep, number of minutes restless, and number of times awoken.

And when I read that, I thought, that can’t be right.

So my question is, shouldn’t it be awakened?

Number of times awoken.

Okay, so a Fitbit is something that monitors your health and your activities, right?

Are you walking and counting your paces?

Correct.

You put this on your wrist.

It sends data to your phone or your computer, collects things like number of steps you take,

What does it do, heart rate and temperature,

And sudden movements in the night when you’re supposed to be sleeping, that sort of thing?

That’s right.

Yeah.

While we’ve been talking here, I’ve been Googling this.

All of the screenshots, they have it say, awakened.

Now, maybe they changed it?

Yeah, maybe they.

Well, on my Fitbit dashboard, I checked this today because I wanted to be sure that I was telling you,

You know, they’ve given you the accurate information.

And it says, times awoken.

Awoken?

Awoken.

Wow.

I love it because that’s kind of unusual in modern English, right?

Yeah, I wonder if they just misspelled awakened.

Maybe they need to update their software.

I mean, Sally, the Fitbit is giving you all kinds of great affirmation, it sounds like.

But I want to give you some more affirmation, which is to congratulate you for calling about what has been described as the most vexing verb in the English language.

Oh. Wait a second.

Wait a second.

That’s not the most vexing verb, is it?

You don’t think so?

No, I thought versing somebody in a video game was the most vexing verb.

Vexing.

No, no, no.

In fact, I have a collection of things that language authorities, phrases they’ve used to describe wake and awake, those two verbs.

And they call it the most vexing, the messiest.

It’s a muddle.

It’s not yet settled down from its long entangled history.

So it puzzles even the experts.

But there’s a lot of verbs.

So you can wake.

You can awake.

You can awaken.

Yep.

And then they all have past participles and past forms, and some of them are the same or similar, right?

Yes, and they can be transitive or intransitive.

Oh, messy.

You know, you can wake in the morning, you can wake someone.

The key is to sleep late and never awaken so that you don’t have to talk about the verbs.

Part of the reason that it’s so difficult is that in the case of both wake and awaken,

There are blends of two older verbs, one of which is transitive and has regular principal parts

And one of which is intransitive and has irregular principal parts.

And so it’s just a big mess.

And I can’t even tell you how I would describe what I did today when I stopped sleeping.

I really can’t.

Woke up.

But, yeah, I usually say woke up rather than I awakened.

But you wouldn’t have a problem with awoken?

That’s wrong, right?

That one sounds like a misspelling.

That sounds awkward.

Yeah, I think it’s wrong as well.

Yeah, I think you could say awoken or you could say…

I was awakened 12 times.

Yeah.

But not I was awoken 12 times.

Yeah, awoken is weird.

I think maybe that’s a bad translation or misspelling.

Or terrible typeface or something.

Misspelling, yeah.

Yeah, I think it’s time for you to give your Fitbit some feedback for a change.

There we go, yeah.

Okay.

Let us know what you find out.

Your linguistic performance is lacking, Fitbit.

I expect you to shape it up, sir.

Yeah.

All right.

Well, thank you very much.

You have affirmed me grammatically and just as the Fitbit affirms me fitnessly.

Nice.

Fitnessly.

I like that.

Fitnessly.

We’re not averse to a coinage here and there.

Yeah.

Thank you so much for calling.

Yeah, good luck with the program.

Take care now.

All right.

Thank you.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Google awakened versus awoken or awoke versus awake.

For a good time.

For a good time.

And you will find every grammar nerd nerding out to the best of their abilities for years.

It’s still a mess.

They’ve been talking about this since like the first minute of the internet.

So there’s tons out there to read.

Good luck with that.

And we’ll be here waiting at 877-929-9673.

Or email us, words@waywordradio.org.