New research has revealed that the public cannot agree what the definition of ‘woke’ is.

YouGov asked Britons to say what they feel ‘woke’ means in their own words, then analysed the results using YouGov’s AI-powered Topic Quantifier tool. The research found there is no single agreed upon definition among Britons as to what ‘woke’ means, but there are several common themes in their answers.

The most common individual association is with awareness, with one in seven Britons (15 per cent) tying it to ‘awareness of political and social issues’, while a further 4 per cent take it to mean more general ‘awareness’. Another 6 per cent of the public see woke as similarly describing ‘thoughtfulness and inclusiveness towards others, especially minorities’. One response sums this view up as “being aware of social problems and particularly racism”.

For others, though, there are more negative associations with the term. One in ten Britons see woke as being a catch-all term for the overly sensitive, linking it with “people who are offended by everything”. Some go further, with 5 per cent using primarily pejorative words to describe the term, including “rubbish”, “insanity” and “brain dead”.

Smaller negative categories include seeing woke as meaning ‘changes to traditional society’ (2%) and ‘views of minorities trying to supersede the majority’ (2%). Meanwhile, 4% of the public explicitly identify it as a derogatory term.

The dictionary definition defines ‘woke’ as being aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues especially of racial and social injustice. However despite this, the research found that some respondents (17%) were confused by the term and unsure of its definition, including one person speaking for many saying “I’ve heard of it before but don’t know what it means”.

The research also found different interpretations across the political spectrum. The three common interpretations of the term woke among 2024 Labour voters, for instance, come under the categories of ‘awareness of social issues’ (22%), that it’s a ‘derogatory term’ (9%) and that it means ‘thoughtfulness and inclusiveness towards others’ (9%). By contrast, the most frequent definitions among Reform UK voters are that woke means the ‘overly sensitive’ (17%) or that it is linked to ‘political correctness’ (13%), often in a pejorative manner.