Meaning & use
beatniks
Last updated
Members of a 1950s counterculture movement, associated with jazz, poetry, and rejection of mainstream social conventions.
See it in a sentence
The beatniks gathered in smoky cafés to read poetry aloud.
Jack Kerouac's novels captured the restless spirit of the beatniks.
A note on using this word
Closely tied to the 'Beat Generation' of writers like Kerouac and Ginsberg; the term was originally somewhat mocking, coined by combining 'Beat' with '-nik' from Sputnik.
Words with a similar meaning
bohemians
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