verb

wecken

wake · wake up

Jemanden aus dem Schlaf holen oder dafür sorgen, dass er aufsteht.

Definition & meaning

wecken means to wake someone up or to rouse them from sleep. It is usually used with a person as its direct object: jemanden wecken means “to wake someone.”

It is also used figuratively to mean to awaken, arouse, or evoke a feeling, interest, memory, or response. For example, something can “awaken interest” or “bring back memories.”

Grammar & word origin

wecken is a regular, separable German verb and is usually transitive.

Present: ich wecke, du weckst, er/sie/es weckt
Simple past: weckte
Past participle: geweckt
Perfect tense: hat geweckt

Its origin is connected to wachen , meaning “to be awake”; historically, wecken has the sense of “to make awake.”

Synonyms & antonyms

aufwecken is a close synonym for waking someone from sleep. It is often interchangeable with wecken in this literal sense.
wachrufen means to bring a memory, feeling, or idea back to mind; it is more often figurative.
hervorrufen means to cause or elicit a reaction or feeling, without the “waking up” sense.
auslösen means to trigger something, especially a reaction or event. It focuses on cause rather than awakening.

There is no single antonym that fits every meaning. In the literal sense, einschläfern (“to put to sleep”) is an approximate opposite. Figuratively, dämpfen [?](vocabuo://word/dämpfen] (“to dampen”) can be an opposite when wecken means to arouse a feeling or interest.