hipster
noun
- contemporary subculture that emphasizes style, authenticity and uniqueness
Wiktionary
Pronunciation: /ˈhɪp.stə/ / /ˈhɪp.stɚ/
noun
Etymology: From hip + -ster. First attested for someone carrying something on their hip in the U.S. in the 1920s. Attested as a variant of hepster in the 1940s, for a follower of the latest fashions/trends/styles.
- A person who is keenly interested in the latest trends or fashions.
“c. 1954, Jack Kerouac, Untitled poem, in Book of Sketches, 1952-57, Penguin, 2006, p. 239, I, poor French Canadian Ti Jean become / a big sophisticated hipster esthete in / the homosexual arts […]”
“The other people in the urine-odored hall stood silently waiting for the hipster to disappear between the tables, to be dropped there by the stocky white detective.”
- A member of the Bohemian counterculture.
- An aficionado of jazz who considers themselves to be hip.
“Heading home from a party, two hipsters, completely stoned, pause to snuggle on a park bench. A fire engine roars by, bells clanging, sirens screaming. The boy flips. “Solid, doll,” he murmurs, “they’re playing our song!””
- A person who wears a hip flask (of alcohol).
“(from Kentucky backcountry moonshine)”
- A dancer, particularly a female one during the 1930s.
- Underwear with an elastic waistband at hip level.
verb
Etymology: From hip + -ster. First attested for someone carrying something on their hip in the U.S. in the 1920s. Attested as a variant of hepster in the 1940s, for a follower of the latest fashions/trends/styles.
- To behave like a hipster.
“But it was a white staff member of a reform school who gave Claude Brown the first notion he ever had that there might be something in the world besides dope and sex and hipstering.”
“The hipsters are hipstering, the businessmen are businessing, the parents are parenting, the children are childrening, and the black teenagers are calling each other niggers.”
- To dress or decorate in a hip fashion.
“Claire's permission, to be going out with this fine, circumspect woman, all hipstered out and cowboy booted, without a chaperone.”
“I nudged Theo. “I give him three hours before he's hipstered it back up again.”