Word.ws English Dictionary

hip hop

hip hop is the alternative form of hip-hop.

Meaning of hip-hop

Noun

hip-hop (uncountable)

  1. An African-American urban youth culture based on rap music, breakdancing etc.
    • "...not knowning as they strolled through the doors of the community center near Bambaataa's mother's apartment that they were writing musical history. Among them was an MC named Lovebug Starski, who was said to utter the phrase 'hip-hop' between breaks in time."2007, James McBide, Hip-Hop Planet, National Geographic (April 2007), 106
  2. A form of popular and dance music featuring strong percussion and a powerful rhythm, usually accompanied by rapping.
    • Even though Houston’s moment was already fading by the late 2000s, the city’s hip-hop culture proved to be endlessly portable and disseminatable.2015 August 9, Jon Caramanica, “Pimp C in a Journalist’s Back Pages”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 01 Nov 2021

See all 4 meanings of hip-hop

Words formed from hip hop

Questions about hip hop

What is hip hop the alternative form of?
Hip hop is the alternative form of hip-hop.

Words near hip hop in the dictionary

  1. hip hip
  2. hip hip hoorah
  3. hip hip hooray
  4. hip hip hurrah
  5. hip hooray
  6. hip hop
  7. hip hop soul
  8. hip hopera
  9. hip hoperas
  10. hip hoppy
  11. hip hopster

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hip hop (page history and authors); hip-hop (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-hip hop.wav.

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