AISHA Examentrainer

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adapted from a blog by Tom Dalzell

For more than 110 years, hip has found a prominent place in our slang, reshaping and repurposing itself every few decades to carry itself forward, from the early twentieth century's hip to today's hipster movement.

Hep or hip

For years hep and hip were used interchangeably. Hep was recorded first, on 9 May 1903, in the Cincinnati Enquirer. The 'aware' sense of hip quickly grew to include 'world- wise', 'sophisticated', and 'up-to-date with trends in music, fashion, and speech'. It expanded to the verb hip in 1932, meaning 'to make aware'. Hip may be a simple, three-letter word, but its etymology (when used in this way) is a mystery. Holloway and Vass suggested in The African Heritage of American English that hip might be derived from Senegalese slaves, for whom xipi in their native Wolof language meant 'to have your eyes open, to be aware'.

Hepcats and hipsters

Hep gave way to hepcat, meaning a knowledgeable and fashionable jazz aficionado. In the September 1937 issue of Downbeat, a caption over a picture showing three male musicians and a female singer reads: '3 Hep Cats and a Hep Canary.' It was not until 1940 that we saw hipcat, meaning the same thing. This was also the case with hepster and hipster - hepster first appeared in the title of Cab Calloway's Hepster's Dictionary, punning no doubt on the rhyme with 'Webster'. Hipster would not appear until 1940, although it would soon outpace hepster in popularity. Both terms referred to a white fan of jazz, and usually of jazz played by black musicians.

Hippie

Next came the early sense of hippie. In the 1950s, hippy or hippie took on a somewhat derisive tone when applied to those who posed as hipsters but were not in fact the genuine article. The first use of hippie in a new 1960s countercultural/flower child sense came in a series of articles on the evolving Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco by Michael Fallon which began running in the San Francisco Examiner on 5 September 1965. Still using beatnik in the headline, Fallon used hippies, heads, and beatniks interchangeably in the body of the article.

Hip-hop

A tad over a decade later, hip showed up in hip-hop, referring to a subculture that originated in the black and Hispanic youth of America's inner cities, especially in the South Bronx neighborhood of New York in the late 1970s. The word hip-hop, like many of its slang giant peers, has several claimed parents, but no solid evidence supporting any of the claims. The earliest recorded usage found to date is from nine years after DJ Kool Herc began the experiments that produced the art form, in the 1979 song Rapper's Delight, with 'Said a hip hop the hibbit the hippidibby hip hip hoppa you don't stop'. Out of the scat context, the earliest usage is from the 24 February 1979 New Pittsburgh Courier, which reported that DJ Starski was "responsible for the derivation of the 'Hip-Hop'."

Hipster

Almost a century into its journey through American slang, hip had at least one more life up its sleeve in the form of the new hipster movement, referring to relatively affluent young Bohemians living in gentrifying neighborhoods. It is an opaque term, and one which is generally not used by anyone considered by others to be a hipster.

All in all, hip has had a remarkable and unusual slang life. Slang is usually short- lived and while there are examples of words that have risen, fallen, and risen again (groovy, sweet and tasty all come to mind), hip is unique in its ability to navigate 110 years, adding suffixes every few decades to emerge fresh and new. It has been a long and strange trip for hip, and there is nothing to suggest that there won't be a new hip variant again soon.