hippies

[Laurence Horn]

At 1:05 AM -0500 2/23/07, Douglas G. Wilson wrote:
>>An interesting alleged history of the word at the bottom of this page. ....
>
>HDAS shows "hippie" in a jazz context from 1952.
>
>A quick look at N'archive shows "hippie" used freely and routinely in the
>mainstream press from 1960 -- although not so frequently as later (ca.
>1967). It does not seem to have been always derisive or sarcastic. E.g.:
>
>----------
>
>June 1960: Earl Wilson's column: <<Bobby Darin, a hippie from New York
>City, ..., completely conquered all the New York hippies. He gave the gals
>the jiggles ....>>
>
>Sep. 1960: Earl Wilson's column: <<The B'way hippies were exclaiming, "How
>about that Castro ....">>
>
>March 1961: Dorothy Kilgallen's column: <<Melina Mercouri, the Greek film
>star who's become a big thing with hippies over here, has been shopping for
>a Paris apartment ....>>
>
>May 1961: Fred Danzig's column: <<The best TV comedy in many a day turned
>up ... as "The Premise" players, an off-Broadway troupe of hippies, reeled
>off some piercing and funny satire.>>
>
>July 1961: Earl Wilson's column: <<I realized I was a square, so now I try
>to talk to hip people -- hipnicks, I call them or hippies.>>
>
This "hipnick" (curious spelling; I'd have expected "hipnik", as in
"beatnik" and of course "sputnik") is a new one on me.  I wonder if
that was originated by Wilson as a blend of "hip(ster)" and beatnik".
I was a regular reader of Wilson's column in the N. Y. Post in those
years, back when it was one of a possibly now dead breed, the liberal
tabloid.

LH

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