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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

beatnik.

A person who dresses in a manner that is not socially acceptable and is supposed to reject conventional norms of thought and behavior; nonconformist in dress and behavior.

7 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈbiːtnɪk/
  1. A person who dresses in a manner that is not socially acceptable and is supposed to reject conventional norms of thought and behavior; nonconformist in dress and behavior.

  2. A person associated with the Beat Generation of the 1950s and 1960s or its style.

Where this word comes from

Coined by American columnist Herb Caen in 1958. From beat (generation) + -nik (“person who exemplifies or endorses something”). Compare jazznik. The suffix, a cutesy or ironic use of the Russian suffix -ник (-nik), experienced a surge of use in English coinages for nicknames and diminutives after the 1957 Soviet launch of the Sputnik satellite.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.