Wokerati/Slepterati

You know, every time somebody like Cruella Braverman calls people she doesn’t like ‘Woke’ or even better ‘Wokerati,’ I feel irritated.

I mean, bloody hell, she even went to Cambridge. Doesn’t she know anything at all about the English language?

So just for Cruella’s benefit, as she motors on in hopes of becoming the first Fuhrer of Great Britain, I’m going to explain something to her.

I shouldn’t need to go to words of one syllable, but I will, if only to annoy her. If I’m irritated, why shouldn’t she be annoyed?

So you see, dear Cruella, ‘woke’ has a meaning in every day life. It’s the Past Tense of “awake.” As in, I woke up this morning.

I wake up every morning. I will wake up tomorrow with a headache. Yesterday I woke up with a crushing sense of futility.

OK? Got that?

Now, the opposite of awake is obviously asleep. As in, I am awake, but Cruella is still asleep.

I woke up to global heating many years ago. However Cruella slept on.

I woke to the uselessness of politicians. Cruella has overslept.

So if I’m Woke, she, and the entire Tory party plus her chums in the Nat-C conference, are Slept.

Thus the magic of English grammar: you can change verbs to nouns and vice versa. You can now turn Past Tenses into adjectives. The trouble is, this has only happened (so far) to ‘awake/woke’ for reasons that escape me.