wake

The word “wake” means to stop sleeping, or to rouse someone from sleep. In plain terms, either stopping sleep, a funeral gathering, or the trail left behind something moving.

“Wake” is pronounced WAYK (/ˈweɪ̯k/ in IPA).

Here is “wake” used in a sentence: “Please don't wake the baby.”

The opposite of “wake” — its antonyms — are sleep and fall asleep.

Depending on how it is used, “wake” can be a verb and a noun.

The word “wake” comes from Old English. From two closely related Old English verbs, wacan and wacian, both meaning "to be or become awake" — they merged over time into one word.

“Wake” is a very common word in modern English, usually learned at around the A1 level.

Wake is mainly a verb — the action of stopping sleep, as in 'I wake at six.' Awake is usually an adjective describing the state of not being asleep, as in 'I'm awake.' You wake up (verb) and then you are awake (adjective).

Wake is irregular: its past tense is woke, as in 'I woke early,' and its past participle is woken, as in 'I had woken before dawn.' The form 'waked' exists but is rare and old-fashioned in modern English, so woke and woken are standard.

They mean essentially the same thing. Wake up is the more common, natural phrasing in everyday speech, while wake alone sounds slightly more formal or literary. Both describe stopping sleep or rousing someone, so 'wake me at seven' and 'wake me up at seven' are equivalent.

The opposite of waking is falling asleep or going to sleep — the shift from being conscious back into slumber. Related opposites include drift off, doze off, and nod off, all describing the move into sleep rather than out of it.