Though the dictionary defines a hippie as anyone who rejects the conventional customs of society, in America the hippies were the product of the countercultural movements of the 1960s and 1970s. The word "hippie" is derived from "hipster," which was once a synonym for "beatnik." The beatniks (see entry under 1950s—Print Culture in volume 3) of the 1950s were the spiritual ancestors of the hippies, who bloomed as the flower children of the 1960s and 1970s. Both groups shared intellectual curiosity, disdain for conventional customs and morals, affinity for recreational drugs, and tastes in music, literature, and philosophy that put them outside the mainstream.

Although the term was sometimes applied too broadly (especially by the "straights," whose world the hippies scorned), hippies tended to be gentle people who embraced colorful clothing, nonpossessive sexual relationships, the use of marijuana (see entry under 1960s—The Way We Lived in volume...