It seems like awaken would be transitive and awake would be intransitive, but dictionary.com lists both words as being used with and without an object. Thoughts?
Dictionary.com sounds right to me. What you propose seem offhand like the most common usages but certainly not the only ones.
Good question. Is there any difference between
“I woke to the smell of frying bacon”
“I awoke to the smell of frying bacon”
“I awakened to the smell of frying bacon”?
There doesn’t seem to be. I wonder how we ended up with two versions. Maybe “awaken” is older, and “awake” developed as a shorter form?