hipster

Etymology

It is probably formed from English hip + -ster, from the adjective hip, aware, in the know.^{[2][3][4][5][6]} The adjective, recorded from 1904 and apparently first used by African Americans, is probably a variant of hep.^[6] The OED compares hepster, and Green's Dictionary of Slang records hepster as a variant.^[2][3] The Oxford Dictionary of English notes that hipster was first used as an equivalent of hepcat.^[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

In African American usage, a female jazz dancer: 1932, in the Baltimore Afro-American; the OED thinks this sense partly alludes to the hip, since the dancers' style and costume emphasised the hips.^[2] The usual sense, a person who is hip, follows in 1938.^[2][3]

Semantic evolution

In the late 1930s and 1940s a hipster was a jazz devotee, a person in the know about jazz and its culture: Green's Dictionary of Slang finds it in the Pittsburgh Courier in 1938 (as hepster) and in Alan Lomax's Mister Jelly Roll in 1941, and describes the type as a black, then also white, bohemian whose style was a deliberate playing down of emotion, perhaps helped by heroin.^[3] The New Partridge dates the jazz sense to 1940 in the United States, with examples from Ralph Ellison, William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac,^[7] and Etymonline to 1941.^[6] Green notes that black speakers had dropped the word by the 1940s.^[3] From 1947 it was used before other nouns, of hipsters and their style.^[2] The OED dates a broader sense, a person who follows the latest trends and fashions with a sense of being outside the mainstream, often regarded as pretentious, from 1989;^[2] Green's Dictionary of Slang describes a 21st-century use for a youth culture of under-thirties, often in creative work, seen as the current form of middle-class counter-cultural aspiration and praised or mocked accordingly, from 2007.^[3] The American Heritage Dictionary defines this hipster as a young, usually urban bohemian with an ironic sensibility,^[8] and Collins as a person who follows trends seen as outside the mainstream, now listing the jazz sense as rare.^[9]

Timeline

• 1932 – a female jazz dancer, in African American usage.^[2]
• 1938 – a person who is hip, especially about jazz; a hepcat.^[2][3] The New Partridge dates the jazz sense to 1940.^[7]
• 1947 – adjective, of or like a hipster.^[2]
• 1989 – a person who follows the latest trends with a self-conscious sense of being outside the mainstream.^[2]
• 2007 – the 21st-century youth culture of hipsters.^[3]

Meanings

Noun

1. A person who follows the latest trends and fashions, especially those seen as outside the mainstream; often derogatory.^[9][2][8]
2. A young, usually urban bohemian with an ironic outlook.^[8]
3. (dated) A person who is hip, especially an enthusiast of jazz and its culture in the 1940s and 1950s; a hepcat.^[9][2][3][7]

Adjective

1. Of or relating to hipsters: a hipster café.^[2]

Word family

• hipsterism

Related words

• hip
• hep
• hepcat
• hippie

Usage notes

Hipster is also used, chiefly in the plural, for trousers or a skirt cut to sit on the hips rather than the waist: this word is formed separately, from hip the body part and -ster.^[4][2][6] The OED dates the garment to 1948 and the trousers to 1958,^[2] Etymonline to 1962,^[6] and the OED also records an obsolete American hipster for a person who carried a hip flask (1920–1927).^[2]

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com
4. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ a b c d e Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
7. ^ a b c Dalzell, Tom; Victor, Terry, eds. (2013), The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, 2nd ed., London: Routledge
8. ^ a b c The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
9. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins