Word.ws English Dictionary

SJW

SJW is the initialism of social justice warrior.

SJW is the initialism of St. John's wort.

Meaning of social justice warrior

Noun

social justice warrior (plural social justice warriors)

  1. (neologism) A person who advocates for progressive views or attitudes, principally with regard to social justice.
    • Looking back, I was more of a cop than a social justice warrior, as people on Tumblr had come to think of me.2021 February 25, Liat Kaplan, “I Was Your Fave Is Problematic”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 02 Jul 2021
  2. (derogatory, neologism) An advocate for social justice views whose actions are deemed overzealous, performative, or insincere.
    • How will your upper class social justice warrior cope with men swearing and pushing each other? Will she faint at the first sight of blood from a split lip? Or will she hike up her skirts, grab a hot soup spoon, and brain the first aggressor she can find?2014, Krista D. Ball, Hustlers, Harlots, and Heroes: A Regency and Steampunk Field Guide, Tyche Books Ltd., →ISBN
  3. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see social justice, warrior; a social justice activist.
    • Conny was a local painter who had achieved modest fame in the Canadian art scene with his experiments in New Age macho realism: the sensitive male writ large as compassionate lover, social justice warrior and loyal son to Mother Earth.1995, Tim Dugdale, I Couldn't Care Less: A Novel, Black Moss Press, →ISBN, page 33

Meaning of St. John's wort

Noun

St. John's wort (usually uncountable, plural St. John's worts)

  1. (usually) Any of several plants, of the genus Hypericum, especially Hypericum perforatum, that have yellow flowers and traditionally ward off evil.
    • that hearbe we call S. John][1612, Michael Drayton, Poly-Olbion song 13 p. 218http://poly-olbion.exeter.ac.uk/the-text/full-text/song-13/
  2. (usually) The plant prepared as a medication.

Forms of SJW

pluralSJWs

Words formed from SJW

Questions about SJW

What is SJW the initialism of?
SJW is the initialism of social justice warrior.

Words near SJW in the dictionary

  1. Sjostrom
  2. Sjostroms
  3. SJP
  4. SJS
  5. SJSU
  6. SJW
  7. SJWism
  8. SJWs
  9. Sjögren's syndrome
  10. Sjögren-Larsson syndrome
  11. sjögrenite

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: SJW (page history and authors); social justice warrior (page history and authors); St. John's wort (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “SJW.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sjw. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.