Word.ws English Dictionary

beatniki

beatniki is the plural of beatnik.

Meaning of beatnik

Noun

beatnik (plural beatniks or (rare) beatniki)

  1. A person who dresses in a manner that is not socially acceptable and is supposed to reject conventional norms of thought and behavior; nonconformist in dress and behavior.
    • The drive against the stilyagi has hampered but not destroyed the development of (Soviet-style) “beatniki” among the younger artistic and literary intelligentsia. […] The tendency of Soviet “beatniki” is to emulate what they consider the Left-Bank bohemianism of Paris. It is a faint whisper of a...1963, George Sherman, “Soviet Youth: Myth and Reality”, in Erik H[omburger] Erikson, editor, The Challenge of Youth (Doubleday Anchor Books; A438), Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, published 1965...
  2. A person associated with the Beat Generation of the 1950s and 1960s or its style.
    • The Beatles first surfaced in the USSR in 1964, when the style of dress of the ‘Beatniki’ was enthusiastically copied.2003 May 25, Nick Paton Walsh, “Macca’s back in the USSR – a few years late”, in The Observer, number 11,041, London: Guardian News & Media, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 27 Aug 2013...
    Synonyms:
    beat

Origin of beatniki

From beat + -niki. Compare Russian би́тники (bítniki).

Questions about beatniki

What is beatniki the plural of?
Beatniki is the plural of beatnik.

Words near beatniki in the dictionary

  1. beatmixes
  2. beatmixing
  3. beatnickery
  4. beatnik
  5. beatnikery
  6. beatniki
  7. beatnikish
  8. beatnikism
  9. beatnikkery
  10. beatniks
  11. Beato

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: beatniki (page history and authors); beatnik (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “beatniki.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/beatniki. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.