lexical item
woke
also: stay woke
Alert to racial injustice and the danger it carries. Originally a literal instruction to stay awake and watchful in hostile conditions, not a political posture.
Where it comes from
No one person coined this.
It comes from Black American speech communities. The record credits the speech community and the earliest citation that proves it, because African American Vernacular English was made by a community over time and not in a moment anyone wrote down.
Lead Belly's 1938 recording is the earliest widely documented instance. The sense of political alertness was current in Black American speech well before it, so this is the first record, not the first use.
Carried further by Black Lives Matter organizers (Aug 2014). Recorded, never authoritative.
What changed on the way out
Kelley was already documenting the appropriation of Black idiom in 1962. Revived in 2014 around Ferguson and Black Lives Matter, then adopted from about 2019 as a pejorative by people who use it for the opposite of its meaning. The 1962 source is itself a warning about exactly what later happened to this word.
In use
Recorded means somebody said it and it was written down. Constructed means it was written here to show the shape of the word, and is an illustration rather than evidence.
- recorded
“Best stay woke.”
Stay alert; it is not safe to relax here.
Lead Belly (Huddie Ledbetter), Jan 1938
- recorded
“If you're woke you dig it.”
If you are aware, you understand.
William Melvin Kelley
The evidence
Community voices first, then the sources closest to the community. Press and dictionary citations are evidence about a word’s spread, not its origin.
- first usecommunity voice
Lead Belly (Huddie Ledbetter), spoken afterword to his 1938 recording of 'Scottsboro Boys'
“Everybody be a little careful when they go down through there. Stay woke.”
- community explanationcommunity voice
William Melvin Kelley, 'If You're Woke You Dig It', The New York Times, 1962: a Black novelist documenting white adoption of Black idiom
- press
The Conversation, 'Back in the day, being woke meant being smart'
- press
Something wrong here? Correct it. Corrections from speakers of a variety take precedence over anything recorded here.