Woke

How to spell woke

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce woke

What does woke mean?

1. verbThe past tense of wake: to have stopped sleeping or to have roused someone from sleep.
2. adjectiveAlert to social injustice and discrimination, especially regarding race and equality.

Woke in a sentence

• verb

  She woke before her alarm and lay still in the dark.

• adjective

  The company rebranded its image to appear more woke to younger customers.

• verb

  The dog barked and woke the whole household.

• adjective

  Critics dismissed the policy as overly woke posturing.

Where does woke come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a native English word, descending from the Old English verbs wacan, meaning 'to become awake or arise', and wacian, meaning 'to remain awake or keep watch'. Both go back to a Germanic root tied to the idea of being alert and lively, the same family that gives us 'watch' and 'wake'. For most of its history 'woke' was simply the strong past tense of 'wake', formed by the old vowel change that turns 'wake' into 'woke' rather than adding a regular '-ed' ending. In the twentieth century African American English developed the phrase 'stay woke', meaning to stay alert to racial injustice, and from that came the modern adjective sense describing someone keenly aware of social and political unfairness. The spelling stays consistent in both uses, so the main thing to remember is the single silent-feeling 'o' followed by the 'ke' that mirrors its parent verb 'wake'.

How the word is built

• wak- (Old English wacian: to be awake, to watch)
• past-tense vowel change to 'o'