COUNTER-CULTURE

noun Also written counter culture or counterculture (Lifestyle and Leisure) (Youth Culture) A radical, alternative culture, especially among young people, that seeks out new values to replace the established and conventional. Etymology: Formed by adding the prefix counter- (an anglicized form of the Latin contra 'against') to culture: something that rebels against established culture. History and Usage: The counter-culture has, in a sense, always been with us, since the younger generation in each succeeding age rebels against the values of its parents and tries to establish a new lifestyle; but the word counter-culture was first used in the US to describe the hippie culture of the sixties by those who looked back on it from the end of the decade. The concept was popularized by Theodore Roszak in his book The Making of a Counter-Culture (1969). Counter-culture has come to be used especially to refer to any lifestyle which attempts to get away from the materialism and consumption of the post-war Western world; in the eighties, it has tended to give way to the word alternative, especially in British English. A follower of the counter-culture is a counter-culturalist. The counter-culture ponytail is gone, sacrificed to the heat of arena lights and the sizzling sweat of the fast-break pace. Time 30 May 1977, p. 40 It was the counter-culture, the alternative society, a middle-class movement, an explosion of creative energy, a bunch of unwashed, stoned-out air heads. Observer 23 Oct. 1988, p. 43 The fact that so many counter-culturalists have now cut their hair...and...become green 'rainbow warriors', is a point which seems to have been overlooked. Films & Filming Mar. 1990, p. 50