Awoke or woke up vs came awake

Question

Michael was in deep sleep, then suddenly came awake.

So it's the first time I came upon the word "came awake". I assume it means the same as "woke up". Does it really? How it differs from "woke up" or "awoke"? Or is it just not a usual way of saying it? Would you sound normal if you'd use "came awake" on daily basis?

'Came awake' uses a very literary style; I'd only expect to see it in very dramatic circumstances such as 'After sleeping for nearly sixty years, the great dragon suddenly sensed a change in the air in the vast cavern, and came awake.' / 'With the economic reforms of Deng Xiao Ping, the sleeping giant came awake in the 1980s'. — Edwin Ashworth, Jun 27 '20 at 14:27
Not really answered at Which is grammatical correct? Woke to the ... or awoke to the .... — Edwin Ashworth, Jun 27 '20 at 14:31
Much better, but 'come awake' not mentioned: awoken vs awaked — Edwin Ashworth, Jun 27 '20 at 14:33
Could you cite your source for the sentence you provide? It would help to know if the source is a recent one. — Isabel Archer, Jun 28 '20 at 09:39
Oh, it was from the book and that is "The Sicilian" by Mario Puzo. As someone already said maybe it happens to appear more in literature? — Nibba snake, Jun 30 '20 at 04:47

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Jun 27 '20 at 14:26

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Came awake is not a normal way of saying it. The iWeb corpus has 85,784 instances of woke up, against 54 instances of came awake.

To me it suggests the suddenness of is - reinforced by the explicit suddenly. H didn't gradually wake up, he came awake.

answered Jun 27 '20 at 14:26

Colin Fine

77,173

I don't know about *reinforced* by the explicit "suddenly". There are just as many hits in NGrams for *slowly came awake* as there are for *suddenly came awake*. To be "reinforced", it would have to already be the reader's "default", but in fact all it does is make the reader seek out some non-standard meaning for a non-standard usage. – FumbleFingers Jun 27 '20 at 14:48
Actually, I'm guessing that appending *and* to my search terms *slowly / suddenly came to and* should largely restrict hits to those where *come to = awaken, regain consciousness. And the NGram hits for that* one strongly suggest we should associate *come to* with speed, but I'd never have thought that until now. – FumbleFingers Jun 27 '20 at 14:56
(But perhaps it is. The "slower" process might more often be referenced as *come [a]round*.) – FumbleFingers Jun 27 '20 at 14:58
Maybe. Among the 54 came awake in the iWeb corpus I count 7 where it is described as "sudden" (including "like a flash of lightning", "in a rush", and "with a start"); and 2 where it is described as "slowly". There are also 9 instances of "with a gasp" (of some kind), or "with projectile vomiting". The rest are unmarked as to the speed (and some of them are figurative) – Colin Fine Jun 27 '20 at 19:37
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I think it's just the standard principle that whenever someone uses a noticeably less common, but nevertheless still "valid" turn of phrase, we assume it's intended tyo imply some difference from normal. In this case, *come awake* is rare compared to *wake [up], so we "know" it's likely to reflect some semantic variation. And I guess the speed* of the process (unusually fast *or* slow) is the most obvious candidate for some "variation from standard" nuance. – FumbleFingers Jun 28 '20 at 12:01

Awoke or woke up vs came awake

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