woke

/wəʊk//woʊk/

woke adjective: awake: conscious and not asleep. Also the simple past of wake.

Adjective

woke (not generally comparable, comparative more woke or woker, superlative most woke or wokest)

(not comparable, usually, African-American Vernacular or slang) Awake: conscious and not asleep.

Synonyms:

alert, awake, caffeinated, conscious, invigorated, invigorating, lively, wakeful, wakesome
(not comparable, slang, usually) Alert, aware of what is going on, or well-informed, especially of racial and other social justice issues.
- Waking up is a damn sight harder than going to sleep, but we’ll stay woke up longer.1942, J. Saunders Redding, “Negro Digest”, in (Please provide the book title or journal name), volume 1
- If You’re Woke You Dig It [title]1962 May 20, William Melvin Kelley, “If You’re Woke You Dig It”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 45
Synonyms:

alert, aware, heedful, hip, observant, on guard, on the lookout, on the watch, on watch, vigilant

Antonyms:

unwoke
(broadly, derogatory, not comparable, often, slang, usually) Holding progressive views or attitudes, principally with regard to social justice.
- 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...2016 August 14, Ross Douthat, “A Playboy for President”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC
- 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.2019 October 29, Emily S. Rueb, Derrick Bryson Taylor, quoting Barack Obama, “Obama on Call-Out Culture: ‘That’s Not Activism’”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company...
Synonyms:

politically correct, right-on

Antonyms:

politically incorrect, unwoke, philistine
(broadly, derogatory, not comparable, slang, usually) Promoting cancel culture, pontification, victim mentality, or virtue signalling.
- 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...2021 June 24, Johnny Luk, “Why ‘woke’ became toxic”, in Al Jazeera, 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...2023 May 10, Katherine Brodsky, “The Rise of the Right Wing Woke”, in Random Minds, via Substack

Noun

woke (countable and uncountable, plural wokes)

(countable, derogatory, often, slang) A person with progressive views or attitudes.
- 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).2022 December 21, Judson Berger, “You Can’t Say That at Stanford”, in National Review
(derogatory, slang, uncountable) A progressive ideology, in particular with regards to social justice.
- 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 2008.2021 January 8, Emilio Casalicchio, “Britain’s culture war extends beyond Brexit”, in Politico
- The woke is the new religion of the left.2022-02-24, Ron DeSantis, Governor DeSantis and Senator Blackburn Address CPAC, via C-SPAN
Synonyms:

successor ideology

Also used as

woke is also the simple past of wake.

woke is also the past participle of wake.

woke meaning in Arabic and Thai

woke in Arabic

alert to what is happening: يَقِظ yaqiẓ, نَبِه nabih

woke in Thai

politically correct; stereotypically leftist: ตื่นรู้ dtʉ̀ʉn-rúu, ตาสว่าง dtaa-sà-wàang, โวก wóok

Examples of woke in a sentence

Garvey done woke me up, I’m gon stay woke.1972, Barry Beckham, Garvey Lives!:
What if there was no niccas / Only master teachers? / I stay woke (dreams dreams)2008, Erykah Badu, “Master Teacher”, in New Amerykah Part One (4th World War):
[…] stay woke[,] people of color, / let us occupy this dissent2014, Lynn Sweeting, WomanSpeak, A Journal of Writing and Art by Caribbean Women, volume 7:
If this were actually true, you would expect real traction for the wokest candidates in the Democratic presidential race.2019 December 6, Jamelle Bouie, “Why the ‘Wokest’ Candidates Are the Weakest”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times...

All 40 example sentences with woke

Synonyms of woke

13 more synonymsFewer synonyms

Antonyms

All synonyms and antonyms of woke

Forms of woke

Adjective
comparative	more woke
comparative	woker
superlative	most woke
superlative	wokest
Noun
plural	wokes

Origin of woke

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.

See the etymology of the corresponding lemma form.

Words formed from woke

Phrases with woke

3 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with woke

42 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about woke

What does woke mean?: Woke means awake: conscious and not asleep.
What is woke in Arabic?: Woke in Arabic is يَقِظ (yaqiẓ), نَبِه (nabih). See Woke meaning in Arabic.
How do you use woke in a sentence?: Garvey done woke me up, I’m gon stay woke.
What part of speech is woke?: Woke can be an adjective or a noun.
How do you pronounce woke?: Woke is pronounced /wəʊk/ (UK).

Words near woke in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: woke (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.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Pvanp7-woke.wav, en-us-woke.ogg.

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