Beat generation
name, noun
name, noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
Noun
- 1 Alternative letter-case form of Beat Generation. alt-of
"They were like the man with the dungeon stone and the gloom, rising from the underground, the sordid hipsters of America, a new beat generation that I was slowly joining."
- 2 a United States youth subculture of the 1950s; rejected possessions or regular work or traditional dress; for communal living and psychedelic drugs and anarchism; favored modern forms of jazz (e.g., bebop) wordnet
Proper Noun
- 1 A group of countercultural American writers who came to prominence in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Their most important works are Jack Kerouac's On the Road (1957), Allen Ginsberg's Howl (1956), and William S. Burroughs' Naked Lunch (1959).
Synonyms
All synonymsExample
More examples"They were like the man with the dungeon stone and the gloom, rising from the underground, the sordid hipsters of America, a new beat generation that I was slowly joining."
Etymology
Often attributed to Herbert Huncke, from beat (“exhausted”), with Jack Kerouac later claiming it derived from beatific instead.