Entry · catalog no. 7444
woke
/ — /pending
adjective · South / national · 2026
✓ 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.
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
The South
South / national · 2026
Spoken by
South / national
$WOKEThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Rising0 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
12/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
2026
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.
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New Orleans, LA
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Houston, TX
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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