Word.ws English Dictionary

hip cat

hip cat is the alternative form of hepcat.

Meaning of hepcat

Noun

hepcat (plural hepcats)

  1. (informal) A jazz performer, especially one from the 1940s and 1950s.
  2. (dated, humorous, informal, often) A person associated with the jazz subculture of the 1940s and 1950s.
    • Everybody is asking, Why is Harry such a solid sender? Well, hear my version. As you are seated or are trying to stay seated you feel that sensation that hits every hep-cat. First your feet get the sensation, then it runs up your leg and you start to keep time to the music with your feet and you...1943 May 9, Orlando Suero, “Jive, as a Hep-Cat Hears it”, in The New York Times, →ISSN
    Synonyms:
    hepster
  3. (dated, informal) A sophisticated person, one who is stylish.
    • Finally the door opens and out comes Alex Aums in a sharp blue suit, like a hepcat, cigarette in mouth, squinting at us narrow-eyed, “O there you are,” to me, “how’ve you been? Wont^([sic]) you come in?” indicating the office.1965, Jack Kerouac, Desolation Angels, page 177

Forms of hip cat

pluralhip cats

Questions about hip cat

What is hip cat the alternative form of?
Hip cat is the alternative form of hepcat.

Words near hip cat in the dictionary

  1. hip baths
  2. hip bone
  3. hip bones
  4. hip boot
  5. hip boots
  6. hip cat
  7. hip cats
  8. hip check
  9. hip checked
  10. hip checking
  11. hip checks

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hip cat (page history and authors); hepcat (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: “hip cat.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hip_cat. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.