Hippie (etymology)

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Main article: Hippie

According to lexicographer Jesse Sheidlower, the principal American editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, the terms hipster and hippie derive from the word hip, whose origins remain unknown. The words "hip" and "hep" first surfaced around the beginning of the 20th century and spread quickly, making their first appearance in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1904. At the time, the words were used to mean "aware" and "in the know."[1]

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[edit] Wolof language

In the 1960s, African language scholar David Dalby popularized the idea that American slang words could be traced to West African words. Dalby claimed that "hipi" (a word in the Wolof language meaning "to open one's eyes") was the source for "hip" and "hep".[2] However, Jesse Sheidlower disagrees that the term hip comes from Wolof origins.[1]

[edit] Hip, hipster and hippie

During the jive era of the late 1930s and early 1940s, African-Americans began to use the term hip to mean "sophisticated, fashionable and fully up-to-date".[1] The term hipster was coined by Harry Gibson in 1940, and was used during the 1940s and 1950s to describe jazz performers. The word evolved to describe Bohemian counterculture. Like the word hipster, the word hippie is jazz slang from the 1940s, and one of the first recorded usages of the word hippie was in a radio show on November 13, 1945, in which Stan Kenton called Harry Gibson "Hippie".[3] This use was likely playing off Gibson's nickname, "Harry the Hipster."[4]

In Greenwich Village, New York City, young counterculture advocates were named hips because they were considered "in the know" or "cool", as opposed to being square. Reminiscing about late 1940s Harlem in his 1964 autobiography, Malcolm X referred to the word hippy as a term African Americans used to describe a specific type of white man who "acted more Negro than Negroes."[5]

In a 1961 essay, Kenneth Rexroth used both the terms hipster and hippies to refer to young people participating in African American or Beatnik nightlife.[6]

In 1963, the Orlons, an African-American singing group from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania released the soul dance song "South Street", which included the lyrics "Where do all the hippies meet? South Street, South Street...The hippest street in town".[7][8] Some transcriptions read "Where do all the hippist (sic) meet?"[9] Nevertheless, since many heard it as "hippies", that use was promoted. "The Hippies" was also the name of a mixed African American and white soul singing group on the Orlons' record label, Cameo-Parkway.[10]

A hip person, a hipster, or a hippie, then, is someone who is aware of the latest developments or trends, as in "I'm hip to that." It was also often used as a verb in the early days, such as in the phrase, "I'm hipping you, man," which meant, "I'm making you wise." [11]

[edit] Modern use

“ Numerous theories abound as to the origin of this word. One of the most credible involves the beatniks, who abandoned North Beach, San Francisco, to flee commercialism in the early 1960s. Many of them moved to the Haight-Ashbury area of San Francisco, where they were idolized and emulated by the young university students who lived in the neighborhood. The beats (the hip people) started calling these students "hippies", or younger versions of themselves. Actually, the counterculture seldom called itself hippies; it was the media and straight society who popularized the term. More often, we called ourselves freaks or heads. Not until later did we begin calling ourselves hippies, and by then we were "aging hippies". An alternate spelling seldom used in the United States by people in the know was hippy, but it was spelled that way in England. ”

—John Bassett McCleary, [12]

A very early appearance of the term hippies was on November 27, 1964 in a TIME Magazine article about a 20-year old's drug use scandalizing the town of Darien, Connecticut: "The trouble is that in a school of 1,018 pupils so near New York there is bound to be a fast set of hard-shell hippies like Alpert [the 20 year old] who seem utterly glamorous to more sheltered types."[13] Shortly afterwards, on December 6, 1964, in an article entitled "Jean Shepherd Leads His Flock On A Search For Truth", New York Times journalist Bernard Weinraub wrote about the Limelight coffeehouse, quoting Shepherd as using the term hippie while describing the beatnik fashions that had newly arrived in Greenwich Village from Queens, Staten Island, Newark, Jersey City, and Brooklyn[14]. And the Zanesville Times Recorder, on January 1, 1965, ran a story questioning how society could tolerate a new underground New York newspaper started by Ed Sanders called The Marijuana Times — whose first issue (of only two, dated January 30) it directly quoted as saying: "The latest Pot statistics compiled through the services of the Hippie Dope Exchange, will be printed in each issue of the Marijuana Newsletter."

Another early appearance was in the liner notes to the Rolling Stones album, The Rolling Stones, Now!, released in February 1965 and written by the band's then-manager, Andrew Loog Oldham. One sentence of the notes reads, "Their music is Berry-chuck and all the Chicago hippies..." and another sentence from the same source reads, "Well, my groobies, what about Richmond, with its grass green and hippy scene from which the Stones untaned." [15]

Rev. Howard R. Moody, of the Judson Memorial Church in Greenwich Village, was quoted in the June 6, 1965 New York Times as saying "Every hippy is somebody's square. And don't you ever forget it."

The first clearly contemporary use of the word "hippie" appeared in print on September 5, 1965. In an article entitled "A New Haven for Beatniks," San Francisco journalist Michael Fallon wrote about the Blue Unicorn coffeehouse, using the term hippie to refer to the new generation of beatniks who had moved from North Beach into the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco. Fallon reportedly came up with the name by condensing Norman Mailer's use of the word hipster into hippie.[16]

Use of the term hippie did not become widespread in the mass media until early 1967, after San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen began referring to hippies in his daily columns.[17][18]

[edit] Pejorative use

To the late 1950s/early 1960s Beat Generation, the flood of mid-1960s youths adopting beatnik sensibilities appeared as a cheap, mass-produced imitation. By Beat Generation standards, these newcomers were not cool enough to considered hip, so they used the term hippie with disdain. American conservatives of the period used the term hippie as an insult toward young adults whom they considered unpatriotic, uninformed, and naive.[citation needed] Ronald Reagan, who was governor of California during the height of the hippie movement, described a hippie as a person who "dresses like Tarzan, has hair like Jane, and smells like Cheeta."[19] Others used the term hippie in a more personal way to disparage long-haired, unwashed, unkempt drug users. In contemporary conservative settings, the term hippie is often used to allude to slacker attitudes, irresponsibility, participation in recreational drug use, activism in causes considered relatively trivial, and leftist political leanings (regardless of whether the individual is actually connected to the hippie subculture).[20] An example is its use by the South Park cartoon character, Eric Cartman.[21] In Britain in the 2000s, the term, spelled hippy, is generally seen as a pejorative label.[citation needed]

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ a b c Sheidlower, Jesse. "Crying Wolof", Slate Magazine, 2004-12-08. Retrieved on 2007-05-07. 
  2. ^ Roediger 1995, pp. 663-664.
  3. ^ NBC studios, live radio program, the "Jubilee" show at Billy Berg's jazz club in Hollywood, CA, and recorded through the transcription service of the Armed Forces Radio Corps, or AFRC, and available on the CD "Stan Kenton And Friends," 2006
  4. ^ Words@Random. (1998, May 21) The Mavens' Word of the Day: Hippie. Random House, Inc. Retrieved on 2006-10-09.
  5. ^ Booth, 2004, p. 212. "A few of the white men around Harlem, younger ones whom we called 'hippies', acted more Negro than Negroes. This paricular one talked more 'hip' talk than we did."
  6. ^ Rexroth, Kenneth. (1961). "What's Wrong with the Clubs." Metronome. Reprinted in Assays
  7. ^ http://www.top40db.net/Lyrics/?SongID=63215&By=Year&Match=1963 and http://www.geosound.org/geonews.htm retrieved 2006-12-13
  8. ^ http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0032253/bio retrieved 2006-12-13
  9. ^ http://webfitz.com/lyrics/index.php?option=com_webfitzlyrics&Itemid=27&func=fullview&lyricsid=1141 retrieved 2006-12-13
  10. ^ http://www.websitetoolbox.com/tool/post/bsnpubs/vpost?id=73942&trail=345 See 2006 April 16 from "W.B." and 2006 April 17 from Boppin Brian. Retrieved 2006-12-13. The reference says that at least some copies of the vinyl record included both the then-current and former names. http://www.musicsojourn.com/AR/Soul/page/o/Orlons.htm retrieved 2006-12-13. See Disk 1, song 8, Memory Lane, and Disk 2, song 21, South Street. The reference says that the 2005 re-release of the former is credited to "The Hippies a.k.a. The Tams".
  11. ^ http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary Merriam-Webster on-line dictionary as of 2006 Dec. 17.
  12. ^ McCleary, John Bassett (2004), The Hippie Dictionary: A Cultural Encyclopedia of the 1960s and 1970s, Ten Speed Press, pp. 246–247, ISBN 1580085474, <http://www.hippiedictionary.com/> .
  13. ^ "Darien's Dolce Vita", TIME, November 27, 1964
  14. ^ December 6, 1964 New York Times article - "Jean Shepherd Leads His Flock on a Search for Truth."
  15. ^ the album "The Rolling Stones. Now!" published Feb 13, 1965 in England.
  16. ^ Tompkins, 2001, Vol. 7
  17. ^ Mecchi, 1991, 22 Dec 1966 column, pp 125-26. Chronicle columnist Arthur Hoppe also used the term--see "Take a Hippie to Lunch Today," S.F. Chronicle, 20 Jan 1967, p. 37.
  18. ^ San Francisco Chronicle, 18 Jan 1967 column, p. 27
  19. ^ Stolley 1998, p. 137.
  20. ^ The Lexington Herald-Leader wrote an editorial on 11/12/06 that stated in part: "Radicalized, the flower children morphed into lefty loonies who now masquerade as social progressives. No matter what they rename themselves, however, their agenda hasn't changed...For example, consider their continued belief that America's armed forces are neo-Nazi stormtroopers who delight in burning babies to further the aims of imperialistic corporations. Such nonsense, now treated as legitimate by the left-leaning media, denigrates the patriotic values and sincerity of half the nation. It undermines the war effort, insults the dead and the survivors of battle and their families, and supports the aims of the enemy." www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/news/editorial/15986574.htm
  21. ^ In the "Die Hippie, Die" South Park episode, the entire town joins Cartman in his negative view of hippies after they arrive in town for a "Hippie Music Jam Festival."

[edit] References

  • Booth, Martin (2004), Cannabis: A History, St. Martin's Press, ISBN 0-312-32220-8 .
  • Roediger, David (Winter, 1995), “Guineas, Wiggers, and the Dramas of Racialized Culture”, American Literary History 7 (4): 654-668 .
  • Stolley, Richard B. (1998), Turbulent Years: The 60s (Our American Century), Time-Life Books, ISBN 0-7835-5503-2 .
  • Tompkins, Vincent, ed. (2001b), “Hippies”, American Decades, vol. 7: 1960-1969, Detroit: Thomson Gale .