Etymology From hip + -ster. First attested for someone carrying something on their hip in the U.S. in the 1920s. Attested as a variant of hepster in the 1940s, for a follower of the latest fashions/trends/styles.
1
A person who is hip, being keenly interested in the latest trends or fashions.
c. 1954, Jack Kerouac, Untitled poem, in Book of Sketches, 1952-57, Penguin, 2006, p. 239, I, poor French Canadian Ti Jean become / a big sophisticated hipster esthete in / the homosexual arts […]
The other people in the urine-odored hall stood silently waiting for the hipster to disappear between the tables, to be dropped there by the stocky white detective.1970, Wally Ferris, Across 110th, page 90:
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Clare grapples with the idea that she, a well-dressed city hipster, will soon be in the boondocks raising a child with two men who are as much in love with each other as with her: "I'm not this unusual," she stammers. "It's just my hair."1991 August 10, Chris Nealon, “Get A Life”, in Gay Community News, volume 19, number 4, page 10:
Donald Fagen and Walter Becker seem like the kind of late-1960s hypercerebral born-cynical East Coast hipsters who are often found valorizing authenticity in aesthetic expression.2008 June 16, Ben Ratliff, “Pop Veterans Still Pumping Anti-Charisma”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 09 Feb 2021:
And his conclusion is that in a vast range of scenarios, the hipster population always undergoes a kind of phase transition in which members become synchronized with each other in opposing the mainstream. In other words, the hipster effect is the inevitable outcome of the behavior of large numbers of people.2019 February 28, “The hipster effect: Why anti-conformists always end up looking the same”, in MIT Technology Review, archived from the original on 04 Apr 2025:
2
A member of a Bohemian counterculture.
Near-synonym: hippie
3
An aficionado of jazz who considers themselves to be hip.
Near-synonym: hippie
Heading home from a party, two hipsters, completely stoned, pause to snuggle on a park bench. A fire engine roars by, bells clanging, sirens screaming. The boy flips. “Solid, doll,” he murmurs, “they’re playing our song!”1952 September 29, “"BOP VOCABULARY" section, inside of "That Crazy Bop Joke Craze"”, in LIFE Magazine, New York, U.S., page 69:
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US, Obsolete A person who wears a hip flask (of alcohol).
Etymology From hip + -ster. First attested for someone carrying something on their hip in the U.S. in the 1920s. Attested as a variant of hepster in the 1940s, for a follower of the latest fashions/trends/styles.
But it was a white staff member of a reform school who gave Claude Brown the first notion he ever had that there might be something in the world besides dope and sex and hipstering.2000, Eugene Davidson, Reflections on a Disruptive Decade: Essays on the Sixties, page 139:
The hipsters are hipstering, the businessmen are businessing, the parents are parenting, the children are childrening, and the black teenagers are calling each other niggers.2011, Martin Bodek, The Year of Bad Behavior: Bearing Witness to the Uncouthiest of Humanity, →ISBN:
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If you're up for a night of hipstering, this is a good spot to begin - a grungy joint that nevertheless hosts a solid varying roster of blues, funk, reggae, rock and indie bands.2017, The Rough Guide to the USA, →ISBN:
Claire's permission, to be going out with this fine, circumspect woman, all hipstered out and cowboy booted, without a chaperone.2009, Jill Malone, A Field Guide to Deception, →ISBN, page 135:
I nudged Theo. “I give him three hours before he's hipstered it back up again.2014, Tellulah Darling, My Life From Hell, →ISBN:
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Victorian frock coats and neckwear, with facial hair that would make any hipster contemplate giving up hipstering and taking up...2019, Michael Pryor, Graveyard Shift in Ghost Town, →ISBN: