• cool 50s youth culture. Wore berets and polo necks. Hung out in coffee shops playing bongos and reciting poetry and experimenting with marijuana.Pre-dates the hippie movement by about 10-15 years.


    Beatnik meaning & definition 1 of Beatnik.


  • Jazz hippies in berets.

    Beatnik meaning & definition 2 of Beatnik.


  • A member of the Beat Generation (late 50s - early 60s), a nonconformist in dress and thought. Often reknowned for wearing black turtleneck sweaters, stove-pipe trousers, dark glasses and berets. They used to hang out at coffee shops where they would recite poetry (sometimes accompanied by bongo drums), and talk about jazz or the people/society/regimes that are oppressing them and trying to make them conform.

    Beatnik meaning & definition 3 of Beatnik.


  • a 50s group of young men after the war looking for atction and excitement, created art and roamed around countries looking for truth, were taught by zen Buddhist, ate Bacon Egg and Cheese sandwhiches. they were, as Cassidy would say It. Their poetry often resembles Rimbaud, Blake and Whitman.

    Beatnik meaning & definition 4 of Beatnik.


  • A conformist to the Beats. They irritated Jack Kerouac (founder of the beats) to the point where he said he hated them.

    Beatnik meaning & definition 5 of Beatnik.


  • as the first person said, pre-date hippies by about 20 years, were interested in poetry, art, literature.

    Beatnik meaning & definition 6 of Beatnik.


  • Someone who is beat by society, someone
    at the bottom of the bucket.Someone
    who has been down so long it looks like
    up.A part of the lost generation. A cool
    cat,a beatnik, man.

    Beatnik meaning & definition 7 of Beatnik.


  • Contrary to popular belief, Beatniks were not black beret, black turtleneck, dark sunglasses, goatee wearing kids who hung-out in dark cafes reading poetry. Allegedly, the word was coined by a reporter who combined the words beat—tired, worn out—short for Beat Generation, and nik, short for Sputnik, the World’s first space satellite, implying members of the Beat Generation (my parents’ generation, who were children in the 1940s and in their twenties in the 1950s) were Communists—and some of them were. There were real Beatniks though—what we in the States called Hippies (little Hipsters), the British called Beatniks. In virtually every way, they were one in the same. Beginning in the late ‘50s, the stereotype “Beatnik” we think of today was created as a marketing ploy to create a new subculture in order to sell anything from berets and sunglasses to cheap bongos. Hollywood contributed to the stereotype, but also portrayed Beatniks for what they really were, at times. A very realistic TV “Beatnik” was Maynard, played by Bob Denver, in The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis (1959).

    Beatnik meaning & definition 8 of Beatnik.


  • Basically the original, almost forgotten incarnation of the modern day [hipster].
    People think that hipsters are a new thing, but in reality have been around for years, the only difference is that a modern hipster mixes the beatnik style with [indie], [scene] or [emo].
    They were a subculture of (mostly wealthy) young people in the 1950s that drank coffee, enjoyed art and music, wrote poetry, did psychedelic drugs, and smoked cigarettes. Practiced minimalism, and were very, very political. Men wore berets with striped shirts and sandals, and the women wore berets, little black dresses and scarves.
    Would say slang things like Thats beat and daddy-O.

    Beatnik meaning & definition 9 of Beatnik.


  • A young person in the 1950s and early 1960s belonging to a subculture associated with the beat generation.

    Beatnik meaning & definition 10 of Beatnik.


  • (especially in the 1950s and 1960s) a young person who did not accept societys customs and principles, and showed this by the way they dressed and behaved

    Beatnik meaning & definition 11 of Beatnik.

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