[Ads-l] Antedating of "Hippie"

[Laurence Horn]

Aha!  I didn’t think of looking at the wiki-entry.  Very nice.  I was thinking ’65 on the West Coast, so it’s good to have confirmation.  I love the title of the Fallon piece—makes it look as though New Haven was part of the trajectory, even though we weren’t.

LH

> On Sep 10, 2018, at 12:18 PM, Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> 
> From Wikipedia:
> 
> ----
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etymology_of_hippie
> 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. (In a 1969 interview, San Francisco writer Ralph Gleason
> attributed this move to tourism.) Fallon reportedly came up with the name
> by condensing Norman Mailer's use of the word "hipster" into "hippie."
> ----
> 
> Fallon's 9/5/65 article in the San Francisco Examiner was the first in a
> four-part series:
> 
> https://www.newspapers.com/clip/23611289/hippie_1/
> https://www.newspapers.com/clip/23611379/hippie_2/
> https://www.newspapers.com/clip/23611403/hippie_3a/
> https://www.newspapers.com/clip/23611420/hippie_3b/
> https://www.newspapers.com/clip/23611436/hippie_4/
> 
> I used 1965 as the birth year of the Bay Area countercultural "hippie" here
> (based on Fallon's series, I think):
> 
> https://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wordroutes/of-hipsters-
> hippies-and-hepcats/
> 
> 
> On Mon, Sep 10, 2018 at 11:58 AM, Shapiro, Fred <fred.shapiro at yale.edu>
> wrote:
> 
>> The context doesn't clarify much, but it is likely, I think, that the 1944
>> citation is in the basic sense of "one who is hip."
>> 
>> 
>> I have tried to antedate the 1966 first use for the "Berkeley
>> countercultural" sense of "hippie," but it seems to be difficult to find
>> 1965 evidence.
>> 
>> Fred Shapiro
>> 
>> 
>> ________________________________
>> From: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> on behalf of
>> Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
>> Sent: Monday, September 10, 2018 11:36 AM
>> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>> Subject: Re: Antedating of "Hippie"
>> 
>> Presumably the surrounding context clarifies what sort of folks those
>> “hippies” were.  Note the referential split between OED hippy/hippie 1
>> (‘one who is in the know, esp. about jazz music and culture; hepcat) and 2
>> ('A member of a countercultural movement which began in the late 1960s,
>> characterized by pacifism, rejection of conservative values, and a
>> nonconformist appearance…’). The first attestations of the latter
>> denotation are from 1966, but I suspect it could be pushed back a little.
>> 
>> LH
>> 
>>> On Sep 10, 2018, at 8:58 AM, Shapiro, Fred <fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU>
>> wrote:
>>> 
>>> hippie (OED 1948)
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 1944 _New York Age_ 8 Jan. 9/8 (Readex)  There is too much adulation by
>> Harlem children of the "hippies" and their activities.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Fred Shapiro
>>> 
> 
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