counterculture

[koun-ter-kuhl-cher]

noun

1. the culture and lifestyle of those people, especially among the young, who reject or oppose the dominant values and behavior of society.

counterculture

/ ˈkaʊntəˌkʌltʃə /

noun

1. an alternative culture, deliberately at variance with the social norm

counterculture

1. A protest movement by American youth that arose in the late 1960s and faded during the late 1970s. According to some, young people in the United States were forming a culture of their own, opposed to the culture of Middle America. (See hippies and Woodstock.)

Other Word Forms

• countercultural adjective
• counterculturist noun
• counterculturalist noun

Word History and Origins

Origin of counterculture¹

First recorded in 1965–70; counter- + culture

Example Sentences

She added, “There was a counterculture element to Oppenheimer. The people at the big firms were all being paid to be consensus.”

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Perhaps for comic relief, another living megasaur of ’70s counterculture, Sam Shepard, shows up briefly to jam, atrociously, with Smith on acoustic guitar.

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Due to its liberating and anarchic nature, there is a consensus that Burning Man symbolizes the legacy of the socially libertarian spirit of the 1960s counterculture.

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As graffiti grew in popularity prolific "writers" began turning walls into colourful and edgy displays of counterculture.

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Berlin became a pumping techno and rave hub in the years following the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall, as an anarchic counterculture moved into abandoned industrial sites to create music, dance and art spaces.

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