Hippie

How to spell hippie

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce hippie

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does hippie mean?

1. nounA person, especially of the 1960s counterculture, who rejects conventional values and often favours peace, communal living, and an unconventional lifestyle.

Hippie in a sentence

• Her grandfather was a hippie who lived on a commune in the late sixties.

• The festival attracted everyone from corporate workers to the occasional ageing hippie.

Where does hippie come from?

Language of origin: Other

This word grew out of the American slang adjective 'hip', meaning fashionable, knowing, or aware of the latest trends, a sense recorded in jazz and African American vernacular speech in the early twentieth century and probably related to the older 'hep'. The original root meaning was simply someone who was 'in the know'. By adding the casual, familiar ending '-ie' (the same one that gives us 'sweetie' and 'oldie'), speakers formed a noun for a person who was hip. The term took its modern shape in the United States in the mid 1960s, where it came to describe a young member of the counterculture who rejected mainstream values, often associated with long hair, communal living, and the peace movement. The doubling of the 'p' happens because the short vowel in 'hip' needs protecting before the '-ie' ending, and choosing '-ie' over '-y' is the spelling trap that catches many writers.

How the word is built

• hipp- (from hip: fashionable, in the know)
• -ie (familiar noun suffix)