Teenybopper

Part of speech: noun, adjective

Definitions

1. A young teenager, especially a girl, who avidly follows pop music and celebrities ; a young teen who closely follows fashionable trends and fads
2. An adolescent girl devoted to pop idols and fashion crazes ; a youngster in the early teen years who eagerly adopts whatever style is currently popular
3. Someone in the early teenage years, typically a girl, obsessed with pop stars ; a teen who keeps up with the latest fashions and fads

Etymology: Teenybopper was coined in the 1950s from two parts: "teeny," a clipped form of "teenage," and "bopper," a person who dances to "bop," the fast, improvisational jazz that was popular at the time. The combination is a bit of American slang built on the new vocabulary of postwar youth culture, where "teen" had become its own marketing category. The word then took on its modern sense of a young fan of pop music, usually a girl who followed teen idols closely. The "bopper" half carries the dance-floor energy of its jazz origins into that picture of enthusiastic, excitable fandom.

Synonyms: adolescent, young teen

Antonyms: adult