Beatnik

Part of speech: noun

Pronunciation: /ˈbiːtnɪk/

Definitions

1. A member of a 1950s counterculture movement who rejected mainstream society and valued artistic expression, jazz music, and nonconformist lifestyle
2. A 1950s cultural rebel who embraced nonconformity, jazz appreciation, and artistic pursuits while rejecting conventional social values
3. A mid-twentieth-century youth who adopted an anti-establishment lifestyle centered on jazz, poetry, and resistance to mainstream societal norms

Etymology: Herb Caen, the San Francisco Chronicle columnist, coined this word in a column of 2 April 1958, and he did it by bolting a Russian suffix onto a slang term of the day. "Beat" had come from the writers and artists of the Beat Generation, and Caen attached "-nik" to it, a suffix borrowed from Russian and meaning roughly "one who exemplifies or endorses" something. The suffix came into English as a playful, half-ironic tool, and Caen's coinage was part of a burst of such formations that followed the Soviet launch of the satellite Sputnik in 1957. Its close cousin "jazznik" shows the same pattern: a musical or cultural label given a Russian-style tag. The result was a word that mocked the new bohemians while also naming them, with the Russian ending hinting at the Cold War fears of the moment. A "beat" was a rebel who had turned away from conventional life, and the "-nik" made that figure sound like a stock type, a sort of self-appointed member of a movement. The word spread quickly through American newspapers and then into general use.

Synonyms: bohemian, hipster

Antonyms: conformist