Why isn't waked used more than woke? Waked just seems better to me.

I never know which to use so I usually say "awakened"

"Regional Note: Regional American dialects vary in the way that certain verbs form their principal parts. Northern dialects seem to favor forms that change the internal vowel in the verbhence dove for the past tense of dive, and woke for wake: They woke up with a start. Southern dialects, on the other hand, tend to prefer forms that add an -ed to form the past tense and the past participle of these same verbs: The children dived into the swimming hole. The baby waked up early." dictionary.reference.com

In Scotland (maybe all of the UK?) the preferred forms would be 'woke' and 'dived'. I'm not sure about Canada - maybe 'woke' and 'dove'.

Unfortunately I'm only familiar with American usage .

There are several dimensions to this: (1) Three different verbs: to wake vs. to awake vs. to awaken; (2) verb tense for each; (3) transitive vs. intransitive; (4) verb vs. adjective (for awake).

Examples: I am now awake. I will wake up at eight. I will awaken at eight. I will wake (or waken) myself at eight. I woke up yesterday at seven. I awoke at seven. I was awoken by my alarm clock. I had awoken a day earlier. She woke me. Etc.

Gets a bit sticky -- and that's standard usage. Another example of "non-standard" usage (spotted in the Chattanooga Times-Free Press: "He awoken in the morning," which, in typical illiterate (Oops -- I mean non-standard) English of the southeastern U.S., interchanges past tense with past participle ("He done it; he shouldn't have did it.") Very common, even among "professional" people.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Professor,

This is representative of the evolution of language to regularize verb forms. In Germanic languages, strong (irregular) past tenses are marked by vowel changes (eat-ate, ran-run) while weak (regular) verbs are marked by -ed or -d. The tendency over time is for the latter form, which is far more numerous, to change the former. Hence, dove to dived and woke to waked are pretty much predictable changes which will eventually become standard.

quote:

In Germanic languages, strong (irregular) past tenses are marked by vowel changes (eat-ate, ran-run) while weak (regular) verbs are marked by -ed or -d.

Let me clarify here: Germanic languages do mark strong past forms with a vowel change. I meant to say that English marks weak pasts with -d or -ed.