Entry · catalog no. 7444
woke
/ /woʊk/ /WOHK
adjective · South / national · 1930s
✓ Verified
1.
Awake to how power actually works, especially the machinery of racism — alert in places where sleeping is dangerous.
“Her grandmother kept her woke about which counties not to drive through after dark.”
Origin & Attribution
Black American speech, generations deep before the culture wars. Lead Belly told listeners to "stay woke" about Jim Crow Alabama on his 1938 Scottsboro Boys recording, and novelist William Melvin Kelley titled a 1962 New York Times essay "If You're Woke You Dig It." A survival instruction long before it was a cable-news insult.
1938
Lead Belly tells listeners to stay woke about Jim Crow Alabama on his Scottsboro Boys recording
1962
William Melvin Kelley titles a New York Times essay "If You're Woke You Dig It"
2014
Carried nationally by the movement for Black lives, then turned into a political epithet
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
The South
South / national · 1930s
Spoken by
Black American speakers, generations deep; national and contested from the 2010s
$WOKEThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Steady88 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
90/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1938
in the culture
Recorded here
2026
point of first record
Cultural energy indexed from documented usage, search interest, and citation frequency. The recorded date is the archive’s permanent point of record.
Hear it spoken
By region — how it actually sounds
@nolakid
New Orleans, LA
@htxdri
Houston, TX
Contribute your pronunciation
Citations & Sources
■
Scottsboro Boys, Lead Belly — recorded song and spoken coda · 1938
submitted
■
+ Cite a sourceIf You're Woke You Dig It, William Melvin Kelley — New York Times essay · 1962
submitted
See also