counterculture

American  

[koun-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

Despite these establishment connections, Mr. Gittlitz shows, the team was swept up in the 1960s counterculture.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 27, 2026

Few things are a better calling card for queer counterculture than a Daft Punk deep cut.

From Salon ● Mar. 1, 2026

Founded in San Francisco by Weir, Jerry Garcia, Ron "Pigpen" McKernan, Phil Lesh, and Bill Kreutzmann, the Grateful Dead became one of the leading music groups to emerge from the 1960s counterculture movement.

From Barron's ● Jan. 11, 2026

The Dead’s graphic symbols, including “dancing” bears, the “Stealie” lightning skull and instrument-wielding terrapins, were plastered across innumerable merchandise and became a calling card of hippie-influenced counterculture over the ensuing decades.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 10, 2026

One part of this counterculture was the environmental movement.

From "The Omnivore's Dilemma" by Michael Pollan

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

These models for interactivity and coordinated behavior may have been launched in the laboratory, but they were first embraced by countercultures.

From Open Source Democracy by Rushkoff, Douglas