Originally rooted in African American Vernacular English (AAVE), “woke” has evolved over the decades, shifting from a term of cultural consciousness to a symbol of social justice awareness, and more recently, to a controversial term in political discourse.

Woke is a slang term that is easing into the mainstream from some varieties of a dialect called African American Vernacular English (sometimes called AAVE). In AAVE, awake is often rendered as woke, as in, “I was sleeping, but now I’m woke.”