NetLingo 2019 Word of the Year: woke

It's always interesting to view history in retrospect. The year of 2019 brought about massive changes and in the minds of many people, you were considered either "woke" or not. 
If you're "woke" you know this word was having a major mainstream moment in 2018, but it wasn't until 2019 that woke penetrated politics, media, technology and entertainment. Also known as "left wokeness" because the ultra-liberal movement of people who live and die by politics started using it to describe a person's awareness of a particular topic, current affairs or social issues. According to them, the more woke one is, the more knowledgeable and empathetic one is about a person or issue. It was seen in social media posts and tweets characterized by snowflake behavior. But groupthink ran rampant and suddenly, everything was getting criticized. 

The term comes from something suddenly springing to life, either out of alarm or determination, as in "You’re woke, so now things are, you know, real." It's also known as an alert to racial prejudice and discrimination that originated in African-American Vernacular English (AAVE). Apparently since the Blacks and the libs started to own it (again), American conservatives started using woke primarily as an insult. It's deemed the NetLingo word of the year this year because almost everyone is using it online. 

Erin Jansen, Internet Specialist, Social Psychologist, Founder of NetLingo.com
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