Awake

[Xinfu]

Could we use awaken? (not awoken)

-If Cynthia had __, she would have killed all of us.

I've consulted online dictionaries; none of them show it to be a past participle. But as you know, when it comes to tense inflections, there are regional differences, and no dictionaries can be perfect and include everything. So I hope our experts can offer some advice. Some people in our region like using awaken this way.

[Glen]

Right or wrong, I say either "If Cynthia had awakened,..." or "...had been awake,..." but then again I'm no expert

[Rusty]

Well, you're not going to like this response (and because of regional usage, some won't agree with my response), but 'awoken' or 'awakened' could be used, depending on where you are from. One is a strong verb and the other is a weak verb. They are synonyms.

Using the title of the thread, 'Awake' is the verb in question. This is the strong verb.
When used intransitively, it means "to come out of the state of sleeping; to stop sleeping."
When used transitively, it means "to cause someone to stop sleeping" or "to rouse from or come out of a state of inaction or dormancy."

In AmE, the past tense form of 'awake' is 'awoke' in most places and 'awakened' in parts of the Southern United States.
It is 'awoke' in BrE.
In AmE, the past participle is 'awoken' or 'awoke' (rare) in most places and 'awakened' in parts of the Southern United States.
It is 'awoke' or 'awaked' (rare) in BrE.

The past participle is used with the helping verb 'have'.
So, 'had awoken' or, less commonly, 'had awakened', would be grammatically correct in American English, depending on which region you hail from, and 'had awoke' would be grammatically correct and common in British English.


The weak form of 'awake', which many like to use, is 'awaken'. It is synonymous with 'awake'.

The past tense form of 'awaken' is 'awakened', in both AmE and BrE.
In both AmE and BrE, the past participle is 'awakened'.
(There may be regional differences.)

The past participle is used with the helping verb 'have'.
So, 'had awakened' is grammatically correct and common in both American and British English (with regional differences).

You should also have a look at the forms of 'wake', which is where we get the verbs 'awake' and 'awaken' from. The forms vary depending on the region.

Try 'wake up' if all else fails.
In AmE, it's a strong verb in most places, so 'woke up' and 'woken up' are the past tense and the past participle form, respectively.
The same can be found in BrE.
However, in parts of the Southern United States and in parts of Great Britain, 'waked up' and 'waked up' are used, respectively.

[Xinfu]

Excellent answers. Thank you.