woke
Part of speech: adj
noun
Morphological type: simple
Topics: government
politics
Etymology: Shortened from woken or woken up, or derived from dialectal use of woke (past participle of wake). The sense of being aware of social injustice dates to at least the 1930s. The derogatory use has been most commonly used as of the 2020s.
Inflected forms:
form: more woke
pos: adj
tags: comparative
form: woker
pos: adj
tags: comparative
form: most woke
pos: adj
tags: superlative
form: wokest
pos: adj
tags: superlative
form: wokes
pos: noun
tags: plural
Senses:
gloss: Awake: conscious and not asleep.
pos: adj
tags: not-comparable
usually
gloss: Alert, aware of what is going on, or well-informed, especially of racial and other social justice issues.
pos: adj
tags: not-comparable
slang
usually
examples: Waking up is a damn sight harder than going to sleep, but we’ll stay woke up longer.
If You’re Woke You Dig It [title]
I been sleeping all my life. And now that Mr. Garvey done woke me up, I’m gon stay woke. And I’m gon help him wake up other black folk.
What if there was no niccas / Only master teachers? / I stay woke (dreams dreams)
[…] stay woke[,] people of color, / let us occupy this dissent
gloss: Holding progressive views or attitudes, principally with regard to social justice.
pos: adj
tags: broadly
derogatory
not-comparable
often
slang
usually
examples: But the cultural conflict between these two post-revolutionary styles — between frat guys and feminist bluestockings, Gamergaters and the diversity police, alt-right provocateurs and “woke” dudebros, the mouthbreathers who poured hate on the all-female “Ghostbusters” and the tastemakers who pretended it was good — is likely here to stay.
Like, if I tweet or hashtag about how you didn’t do something right or used the wrong verb, then I can sit back and feel pretty good about myself, cause, "Man, you see how woke I was, I called you out." That’s not activism. That’s not bringing about change.
If this were actually true, you would expect real traction for the wokest candidates in the Democratic presidential race. But it’s been just the opposite. The woke candidates have been the weakest, electorally speaking, and the defining attribute of the Democratic primary has been a preoccupation with the voters that put Trump in the White House.
[Kevin Smith is] also baffled by some of the accusations that he tried to make the franchise “woke” by focusing on Teela.
Rightwing Tory MPs should stop portraying concerns over the climate and nature as “woke”, and understand that voters are deeply concerned about the crisis, the Conservative minister Zac Goldsmith has warned.
Mr. Prevost, who described himself to Mr. Morgan as a “MAGA type,” said the new pope was “much more liberal” than he was — although, when asked, he said that he would not necessarily call his brother “woke.”
gloss: Promoting cancel culture, identitarianism, pontification, victim mentality, or virtue signalling.
pos: adj
tags: broadly
derogatory
not-comparable
slang
usually
examples: The famous author of Harry Potter, J K Rowling, found herself at the centre of a woke storm after liking a tweet by Maya Forstater, who lost her job in 2019 after tweeting that “male people are not women”. The reaction was immediate, with some accusing Forstater of “killing trans people with her hate” for simply expressing an opinion.
Many on the ‘woke right’ who for some time have spoken against cancel culture, have chosen to embrace a version of their own, boycotting companies that support progressive causes, for example. The overwhelming support for DeSantis’ fight against Disney in Florida is one such illustration. The boycott of Bud Light over the company’s paid promotional social media posts using trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney is another.
The woke right and woke left demand that we internalize our status as victim. Progressives want women and people of color and the poor and LGBTQ people to feel like they are besieged, like they constantly face a barrage of marginalization and disdain. How different is the woke right? Even a brief perusal of the sources I quoted above shows that they very much want straight White men not only to recognize that they are victims, strangers in their own country, but to internalize this identity.
gloss: A person with progressive views or attitudes.
pos: noun
tags: countable
derogatory
often
slang
examples: Not to beat a dead horse, but it would appear that the wokes are in an abusive relationship with the speech policemen, given that some of their favored terms are being abruptly disallowed (like trigger warning or “preferred” pronouns).
gloss: A progressive ideology, in particular with regards to social justice.
pos: noun
tags: derogatory
slang
uncountable
examples: Tim Bale, a professor of politics at Queen Mary University in London, said the war on woke kicked off as a counter to the “silent revolution” of liberal and progressive attitudes during the economic boom of the decades up to 2008.
The woke is the new religion of the left.
Millennials, such as Styles (and the other Harry, HRH, for that matter), were able to popularise and profit from woke.
For I’m afraid the demise of woke won’t be like the end of toothbrush moustaches, indie folk music or any other temporary behaviour supercharged by the whims of the young and the hip, then dropped without consequence.
Derived words: dark woke
dewokify
get woke, go broke
Great Awokening
Hollywoke
hyperwoke
unwoke
war on woke
wokeass
woke capitalism
woke church
wokedom
wokefest
wokefish
woke-free
wokeish
wokeism
woke-ism
wokeist
Wokeistan
wokejoshi
wokel
Wokeland
wokelash
wokeling
woke mind virus
woke mob
woken
wokeness
woke Olympics
Wokepedia
woker
wokerati
woke right
wokery
wokescold
wokespeak
wokester
woke supremacist
woke supremacy
woketard
Woketopia
woketopian
wokewash
wokewashing
wokie
wokification
wokify
wokism
wokist
Translations: