Seapunk

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A fashion and visual art style, characterized by aquatic themes and colours, rave culture, and the digital aesthetic of the 1990s. uncountable

    "Seapunk's aqueous adherents, mostly in the Midwest but spreading fast […] have been characterized as goth mermaids, which certainly captures the look and feel: think turquoise-dyed hair and an embrace of all things oceanic, yay for steampunk jellyfish outfits."

  2. 2
    A fashion and visual art style, characterized by aquatic themes and colours, rave culture, and the digital aesthetic of the 1990s.; A follower of the seapunk style. countable, neologism

Example

More examples

"Seapunk's aqueous adherents, mostly in the Midwest but spreading fast […] have been characterized as goth mermaids, which certainly captures the look and feel: think turquoise-dyed hair and an embrace of all things oceanic, yay for steampunk jellyfish outfits."

Etymology

From sea + -punk; compare earlier cyberpunk, steampunk. Coined by Brooklyn-based DJ Lil Internet, who tweeted about a surreal dream he had in June 2011 ("Seapunk leather jacket with barnacles where the studs used to be"), and later popularized as a Twitter hashtag.

Related phrases

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.