Word.ws English Dictionary

Too Cool

Too Cool noun: a youth subculture that playfully reclaims outdated, rural, or intentionally tacky visual elements from China's recent past.

Noun

Too Cool (uncountable)

  1. (Internet, aesthetic) A youth subculture that playfully reclaims outdated, rural, or intentionally tacky visual elements from China's recent past.
    • The birth of Too Cool is a two-fold phenomenon—a naive layer and a second layer of conscious remaking—and is a result of economic and generational differences in China. By examining aspects of fashion, popular culture, interior and graphic design in the Too Cool style, we gain a more nuanced...2018, Yi Jing Fly, China Too Cool: Vernacular Innovations and Aesthetic Discontinuity of China
    • In a campaign for her latest design, 22-year-old Liu Min leans on a bed of rocks with legs crossed, sporting a Qipao, a body-hugging dress colorful traditional elements like temples, eagles, and a female Buddha. To her 100,000 followers across different platforms, she is one of the thought leaders...2020 June 23, Yaling Jiang, “Decoding “Too Cool” — The Uprising Subculture That Embraces Looking “Tasteless””, in Jing Daily

Examples of Too Cool in a sentence

  • The birth of Too Cool is a two-fold phenomenon—a naive layer and a second layer of conscious remaking—and is a result of economic and generational differences in China.2018, Yi Jing Fly, China Too Cool: Vernacular Innovations and Aesthetic Discontinuity of China:
  • Too Cool challenges the dominant narrative of aesthetics from the East as a knock-off derivative.2025 September 12, Men's Folio, Maximalism is back, and this subfaction of the Y2K resurgence is reclaiming Eastern kitsch.:

Origin of Too Cool

From too + cool.

Questions about Too Cool

What does Too Cool mean?
Too Cool means a youth subculture that playfully reclaims outdated, rural, or intentionally tacky visual elements from China's recent past.
How do you use Too Cool in a sentence?
The birth of Too Cool is a two-fold phenomenon—a naive layer and a second layer of conscious remaking—and is a result of economic and generational differences in China.
What part of speech is Too Cool?
Too Cool is a noun.

Words near Too Cool in the dictionary

  1. too big to jail
  2. too clever by half
  3. too close for comfort
  4. too close to call
  5. too close to the sun
  6. Too Cool
  7. too cool for school
  8. too far gone
  9. too good for this world
  10. too good to be true
  11. too good to last

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Too Cool (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: “Too Cool.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/too_cool. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.