Etymology of hippie

According to lexicographer Jesse Sheidlower, the terms hipster and hippie derive from the word hip and the synonym hep, whose origins are disputed.^[1] The words hip and hep first surfaced in slang around the beginning of the 20th century and spread quickly, making their first appearance in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1904. At the time, the words were used to mean "aware" and "in the know". In the late 1960s, African language scholar David Dalby popularized the idea that words used in American slang could be traced back to West Africa. He claimed that hipi (a word in the Wolof language meaning "to open one's eyes") was the source for both hip and hep.^[2] Sheidlower, however, disputes Dalby's assertion that the term hip comes from Wolof origins.^[1]

During the jive era of the late 1930s and early 1940s, African-Americans began to use the term hip to mean "sophisticated, fashionable and fully up-to-date".^[1] Harry Gibson added the term "the Hipster" to his Harlem stage act in 1944, and in his later autobiography, says he coined it for that purpose.^[3][4] In the 1970s, Gibson remade his act to appeal to contemporary hippies, and is known as the 'original hippie'.^[5] The form hippie is attested in print as jazz slang in 1952, but is agreed in later sources to have been in use from the 1940s.^[6] Reminiscing about late 1940s Harlem in his 1964 autobiography, Malcolm X referred to the word hippy as a term that African Americans used to describe a specific type of white man who "acted more Negro than Negroes".^[7]

In Greenwich Village, New York City by the end of the 1950s, young counterculture advocates were widely called hips because they were considered "in the know" or "cool", as opposed to being square.

The earliest song to mention the word "Hippy" is the 1957 r-n-b (doo-wop) single "Hippy-Dippy-Daddy" by The Cookies,^[8] followed by the 1959 rock 'n roll single "Hippy Hippy Shake" by Chan Romero, which reached #3 in Australia, and was also covered by the Beatles in 1963. One of the earliest print attestations of the term hippy is found in the "Dictionary of Hip Words and Phrases" included in the liner notes for the 1959 comedy album How to Speak Hip, a parody based on the burgeoning Greenwich Village scene. As opposed to the hipster, defined as "A fully paid-up member of Hip society", a hippy is "A junior member of Hip society, who may know the words, but hasn't fully assimilated the proper attitude." It also defines hippie-dip as "Derogatory word for hippy."

A syndicated newspaper column from 1960 said "Bobby Darin, a hippie from New York City, Tonsil No. 1, in the 'New Noise' sweeping America, completely conquered all the New York hippies."^[9]

Ground-breaking comic host Steve Allen thought that he was "the first to turn the adjective 'hip' into the noun 'hippie' ... about 1960".^[10]

In a 1961 essay, Kenneth Rexroth of San Francisco used both the terms hipster and hippies to refer to young people participating in African American or Beatnik nightlife.^[11]

In 1963, the Orlons, an African-American singing group from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania released the soul dance song "South Street", which included the lyrics "Where do all the hippies meet? South Street, South Street ... The hippest street in town".^[12][13] Some transcriptions read "Where do all the hippist (sic) meet?"^[14] Nevertheless, since many heard it as "hippies", that use was promoted. Another 1963 song by the Dovells, "You Can't Sit Down" also referenced South Street Philadelphia and hippies: "When you're on South Street and the band is really bootin'. You hear the hippie with the back beat ...". Another use around the same time was on the 1963 Freddy Cannon single on Swan Records, "Do What the Hippies Do".^[15] In addition, the Stereos, a doo-wop group who had already released their 1959 single "Memory Lane" under the alias "the Tams" (not the more famous group the Tams), re-released the recording yet again in 1963 under the name of "the Hippies".