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0 pointsburkaman3y ago0 comments

I'm pretty sure the word counterculture was literally invented to describe hippies in the 60s.

0 comments

Close. It was invented in 1960, prior to the hippie movement and referring to their predecessors, the beatniks of the 1950s.

I wasn't alive so I'm just going off casual web searches, but most people seem to credit this 1969 book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Making_of_a_Counter_Cultur.... It was not the literal first usage, but the word was definitely not widely known before the 60s: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=counterculture.... But I said literally and it wasn't literally true, so my bad.

antod3y ago

I'm guessing beatniks in the 50s myself.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

Close. It was invented in 1960, prior to the hippie movement and referring to their predecessors, the beatniks of the 1950s.

antod3y ago

I'm guessing beatniks in the 50s myself.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse