counterculture

American  

[kaun-ter-kuhl-cher] / ˈkaʊn tərˌkʌl tʃər /

noun

• countercultures
  plural

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

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counterculture British  

/ ˈkaʊntəˌkʌltʃə /

noun

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

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counterculture Cultural  

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.)

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Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• counterculturalist
  noun
• counterculturist
  noun
• countercultural
  adjective

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• countercultures
  plural

Etymology

Origin of counterculture

First recorded in 1965–70; counter- + culture

Explanation

A group of people who do and believe things outside of what society considers normal or typical can be called a counterculture. A counterculture might organize itself around opposition to war or unusual ideas about raising children, for example. A counterculture is at odds with, and sometimes in direct opposition to, the prevailing norms — this was the case at the beginning of the anti-war "hippie" counterculture that formed in the 1960s as a protest against US involvement in the Vietnam War. The term first emerged around this time in Theodore Roszak's 1969 book "The Making of a Counter Culture."

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

counterculture countercultures

Tom and Charles took in the 1960s counterculture in the city, going to see bands like the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, and Big Brother and the Holding Company.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 2, 2026

The Times spoke with Mockingbird about how a counterculture movement like punk has been co-opted and reclaimed, and if L.A.’s nihilistic feelings back then teach us about surviving today.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 24, 2026

Pop artist Peter Max, whose cheery psychedelic creations helped define the counterculture aesthetic in the 1960s, died on Monday, US media reported.

From Barron's ● Sep. 17, 2026

American colleges became incubators of a new Canadian elite, whose parents had attended British universities; by the late 60s, those campuses also fostered a Vietnam-era counterculture that was skeptical of American power.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 13, 2026

He was never a rebellious youth, not a part of the counterculture, not forever young in some stereotypical Baby Boomer way.

From "Drama High" by Michael Sokolove

He said it was “the first installment in a history of L.A.’s countercultures and protesters.”

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 26, 2022

“The physical remaking of San Francisco, its culture and countercultures, was inseparable from the flux of people and neighborhoods,” Isenberg writes.

From The New Yorker ● Jul. 30, 2018

It’s easy to conclude that Beat culture, like other countercultures that followed, has been co-opted by a mercenary society — easy and a bit facile.

From New York Times ● Aug. 23, 2016

Our capacity to create lifestyle subcultures and countercultures depends on our status and rebel instincts, and together these created the dynamic of oppositional cool consumption.

From Scientific American ● May 8, 2015

Similarly, the computer and Internet galvanized certain strains of both the pagan and the grassroots 'do-it-yourself' countercultures as the 'cyberpunk' movement, which was dedicated to altering reality through technology, together.

From Open Source Democracy by Douglas Rushkoff