hepcat
See also: hep cat
English
Alternative forms
Etymology
From hep + cat, from hep (“sophisticated, aware”). Compare cat (“jazz enthusiast”).[1] Attested in the sense of “sophisticated person” from the 1920s.[2]
Noun
hepcat (plural hepcats)
- (informal, music) A jazz performer, especially one from the 1940s and 1950s.
- (informal, dated, now often humorous) A person associated with the jazz subculture of the 1940s and 1950s; a hipster.
- (informal, dated) A sophisticated person, one who is stylish.
- 2016 August 14, Ross Douthat, “A Playboy for President”, in The New York Times[2]:
- Today he’s just a sleazy oldster, but in the beginning he was a faux philosopher, preaching a gospel cribbed from bohemia and various Freudian enemies of repression, in which the blessed pursuit of promiscuity was the human birthright. But really a male birthright, for a certain kind of man: The sort of hep cat who loved inviting the ladies back to his pad “for a quiet discussion on Picasso, Nietzsche, jazz, sex.”
See also
References
- ^ “hepcat, n.”, in OED Online
, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, March 2018.
- ^ Jonathon Green (2019) “hep-cat, n.”, in Green's Dictionary of Slang[1]
