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The Changing Vocabulary Around “Woke”
Elon Musk says his daughter has been “killed” by a “woke mind virus”
Elon Musk is well known for making attention-grabbing statements to the media.
His latest controversial words have nothing to do with any of the companies he runs, however.
In a recent interview with media commentator Jordan Peterson, Musk told his interviewer that his transgender daughter has been “killed by the woke mind virus.”
Origin of the term “woke”
If you’ve got hours and days to spend doing research, you might just start to get at some of the history and usage of the term “woke.”
Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary currently defines the word “woke” as “aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice.”) It further notes that the term originated in African American Vernacular English and gained more “widespread use” after the Black Lives Matter protests of 2014.
That is the very tip of the slang iceberg.
A more in-depth history of the term can be found from many sources. In a 2022 article in The Independent, Kate Ng pointed to earlier uses of the term, quoting lexicographer Tony Thorne as saying it was first popularly used by African Americans in the 1940s, and “literally means becoming woken up or sensitised to issues of justice.”
In recent years, however, the term has been co-opted by both the political left and the right. On the left, it’s often brandished as an ideological flag symbolizing progressivism, while on the right, pundits and politicians alike have used it as a rallying cry for one another and to indicate when they think opinions are being held solely for the sake of their “politically correct” appearance.
And then there’s Elon Musk
Musk excels at getting attention through words.
Musk’s statements about his transgender daughter’s life and history, made recently, reflect how he is once again dominating the cultural dialogue. Instead of simply referring to his family members and others as woke, Musk has upped the ante by stating that one of his children has been…
