Hippies

[Billionbridges.com]

> It's interesting to see the development traced by Jonathon Green,
> with the term moving from an ironic to an unironic meaning.
> Once the term came to mean an unkempt young nonconformist,
> though (the OED says that the flower children were a sub-group
> of hippies), pejorative uses were immediate and profuse.  The
> earliest "positive" uses seem to be around 1967.

Starting in the late '80s-early '90s the use of the term as either
a perjorative or at least as a means of ridiculing someone or
something seems to have become fairly widespread among
the generations X, Y and whoever comes after that. My
impression is that certainly very few people under the age of,
say, 40, would use the term hippy/ie without smirking.

Don