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b'For years, many on the right have been lambasting a certain kind of progressive sensibility denoted with the term \\u201cpolitical correctness\\u201d\\u2014endless fodder for Rush Limbaugh and others in the nineteen-nineties. But those semi-comic tirades were nothing compared with the serious political fight against \\u201cwoke.\\u201d Florida\\u2019s governor,\\xa0Ron DeSantis, for example, recently signed a so-called Stop Woke\\xa0Act into law, and made the issue the center of his midterm victory speech. In Washington, there has been talk in the House of forming an \\u201canti-woke caucus.\\u201d \\u201cI think \\u2018woke\\u2019 is a very interesting term right now, because I think it\\u2019s an unusable word\\u2014although it is used all the time\\u2014because it doesn\\u2019t actually mean anything,\\u201d the linguist and lexicographer Tony Thorne, the author of \\u201cDictionary of Contemporary Slang,\\u201d tells\\xa0David Remnick. \\u201cThe references to \\u2018woke\\u2019 before 2016, 2017, 2018, were kind of straightforward. It means \\u2018socially aware,\\u2019 \\u2018empathetic,\\u2019\\xa0\\u201d Thorne says. \\u201cThen the right, the conservative right, seizes hold of this word,\\u201d to heap blame on it for everything from deadly mass shootings to lower military recruitment.'