Hipster

A hipster is a person who is strongly associated with a subculture that has been deemed "hip", or "hep." The term was used originally in the 1940s and 1950s to describe aficionados of jazz, and it eventually described many members of the Beat Generation, but its usage declined in the 1960s, with the advent of hippies. Since the mid 1990s, the word "hipster" has been redefined to refer to members of a different subculture. Modern hipsters are those devoted to ironic retro fashions, indie music and film, alternative comics, and other forms of expression outside the mainstream.

Hipster lingo

Many terms in the hipster argot, such as hip, kicks, square and dig continue to be used in their hipster meanings, though often with a certain level of self-conscious irony attached. Cool has entered the everyday speech of many English speakers, and become so common, it is rarely thought of as a word associated with a particular hipster aesthetic.

Related Topics:
Argot - Irony - Cool

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An even earlier term for hipster was gate, used because gates swing. Gate, Jim, and Jackson were used in place of regular names in expressions like "Hold on, Jim" and "Solid, Jackson." Hipsters were also known as hepcats, "hep" being an earlier form of the word "hip". Cat/Kat was used to mean "person"; so a hip kat, or hepcat, is a person who is current and up-to-date. However, "Hippie" was a "Beatnik term"; meaning "Not Hip Enough to be Hip" or "Not hip enough to be a real Beatnik".

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When Beatnik language was the fad, the stereotypical New York hipster, or bohemian, wore a beret, dressed frequently in black, smoked mentholated Kool cigarettes, wore sunglasses even after sundown, and frequented jazz clubs and beat poetry coffeehouses and cafés in the Village. Many hipster terms generally fell out of use in mainstream, white society with the changing of styles and the coming of hippies in the 1960s, but have remained in use in the African-American community, where they were neither in nor out of fashion, but simply part of the traditional lexicon.

Related Topics:
Bohemian - Beret - Beat poetry - Village - Hippie - 1960s

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While attempts have been made to link the etymologies of hip, cat and dig with Wolof, a West African language, this remains a subject of debate among linguists, and is not widely accepted http://slate.msn.com/id/2110811 http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mhip.html.

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