[Ads-l] Another Antedating of "Woke"

[Shapiro, Fred]

Mad Magazine had a second use of "woke" to mean "well-informed, alert," two years after the first:

1960 Mad Magazine June 45 (Internet Archive)
"I am woke, Dad," I broke, oozing, "some cat's at the window, cruising.

This too occurs in a Mad hepcat version of a literary classic (Poe's "The Raven").

Fred Shapiro

________________________________
From: Shapiro, Fred <fred.shapiro at yale.edu>
Sent: Sunday, January 15, 2023 8:37 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Subject: Antedating of "Woke"

Here's a nice antedating, clearly the same idiom as the 1962 New York Times Magazine citation that has been spotlighted by the OED and others as the earliest known appearance of "woke" meaning "well-informed, alert."  The context is a Mad Magazine hepcat version of a scene from Romeo and Juliet.  Undoubtedly the term must have been current slang before May 1958.

woke (OED, adj.2., 2., 1962)

1958 Mad Magazine May 17 (Internet Archive)

My lobes have not yet dug a hundred notes
Of your jive, but, like, I'm woke to your sound.

Fred Shapiro
Editor
NEW YALE BOOK OF QUOTATIONS (Yale University Press)


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