Hipster is derived from the adjective hip, which first appeared in the early 1900s and is used informally to mean ‘fashionable’ or ‘following the latest trends’. The derived form hipster is not new and actually dates back to the 1940s, when it was coined to refer to aficionados of a growing jazz scene, then inspired by use of the words hip and hep to describe someone who was ‘in the know’ about emerging jazz culture. Over time, hipster became less specifically associated with jazz and acquired a more generic reference to someone who is keenly aware of or influenced by the latest trends and fashions, a definition still widely recorded in mainstream dictionaries today. In the early sixties, hipster spawned the creation of hippie (also hippy), a word which moved in a slightly different direction by referring to a person who rejected conventional values (classically associated with long-haired, bead-wearing individuals who took hallucinogenic drugs). In some senses therefore, today’s use of hipster as associated with counterculture could be seen as closer in meaning to hippie than to its counterpart meaning from the 1940s.