This is a hollow root: the middle letter is a vav that hides under the vowels, so the words look short and shifting. The core meaning is waking, and from waking comes alertness, and from alertness comes the small remark you make when you notice something (הֶעָרָה). A surprising branch (pi'el) goes the other way, to the failure of alertness: to blind. One root, the whole spectrum from wide awake to in the dark. Every entry is verified against pealim, niqqud included.
The same root runs through the verb system. Each binyan is a voice: it bends the one idea into active, passive, causative or reciprocal. Tap to hear.
Notice the chain: hif'il means both "wake someone" and "make a remark", to comment is to wake the room to a point. Hitpa'el is the everyday "I woke up", and it also covers feelings and problems that arise. The odd one out is pi'el, "to blind": the same family that makes you alert can also be twisted to shut the eyes. Pu'al / huf'al are not lexicalized here.
Same root letters, different noun moulds (mishkalim). The mould tells you the function: who does it, the act of doing it, or the thing produced.
Strip the prefixes, suffixes and vowels. Three consonants remain, and the meaning lives there.