hippies

Cultural  

1. Members of a movement of cultural protest that began in the United States in the 1960s and affected Europe before fading in the 1970s. Hippies were bound together by rejection of many standard American customs and social and political views (see counterculture). The hippies often cultivated an unkempt image in their dress and grooming and were known for practices such as communal living, free love, and the use of marijuana and other drugs. Although hippies were usually opposed to involvement of the United States in the Vietnam War, their movement was fundamentally a cultural rather than a political protest. (See Woodstock; compare beatniks.)

---

Example Sentences

While home births were once the province of counterculture hippies, Los Angeles doula Rebecca Richter said she’d been hearing from women of all walks of life “who desire more than the system is giving them.”

From The Wall Street Journal • Feb. 3, 2026

His longtime prescriptions of fresh food, sunshine, regular exercise and meditation are now widely accepted building blocks of health, and are no longer the sole province of ditzy L.A. hippies.

From Los Angeles Times • Jan. 13, 2026

Dubbing it “the Californian Ideology,” they argued that the “new faith” blended the “freewheeling spirit of the hippies with the entrepreneurial zeal of the yuppies.”

From Salon • Nov. 7, 2025

"Me, I wasn't a hippy back then, but I knew a lot of hippies," he says with his characteristic laugh.

From BBC • Aug. 9, 2025

We gave the hippies the peace sign and the power sign and walked over to Grant Street.

From "One Crazy Summer" by Rita Williams-Garcia