beatniks

Cultural  

1. Members of the “beat” movement in the United States in the 1950s. Beatniks frequently rejected middle-class American values, customs, and tastes in favor of radical politics and exotic jazz, art, and literature. The movement was often classified as bohemian. The poet Allen Ginsberg and the novelist Jack Kerouac are examples of beatnik authors.

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“Daddy-O” (a term of address); “Cool, man, cool”; and “strictly dullsville” are examples of slang expressions used by beatniks or by people trying to sound like beatniks.

Example Sentences

The video opens with fog and mountains, Pacific Ocean waves crashing into majestic cliffs and the Golden Gate Bridge before mixing in historic images of streetcars, beatniks, retailer Gap, Apple and Google.

From Seattle Times • Oct. 19, 2023

I also omitted "beatniks" from his list of groups he believed were seeking to destroy the country.

From Salon • Aug. 6, 2023

Where would that leave the beatniks and the goths?

From New York Times • Oct. 29, 2019

In conjuring an adolescent burnout, Anwyll might have taken cues from the slacker canon of westward-slouching beatniks and Kevin Smith antiheroes.

From Washington Post • Jan. 2, 2019

A few people had gotten it right, in black turtlenecks and thrifted finds that cut a convincing impression of what people were wearing the night she decided that actually beatniks were the Worst.

From "Night Owls" by A.R. Vishny