flower child
5
6.8
- noun
- /ˈflaʊər tʃaɪld/
- Archaic
:
hippie
- As a flower child, he embraced a lifestyle that rejected materialism in favor of harmony with nature.
- flower children and hippies
- 1960s flower children
Examples
-
The people ranged from moneyed Upper East Siders to the most avant-garde of the flower children.
Blog text (24) -
She proudly identified herself as a flower child of the 1960s, advocating for peace and love.
-
Living with Spirit: Journey of a Flower Child
Blog text (17) -
She called herself a flower child.
-
The clean-cut kids have been replaced by flower children.
Fiction book (1999) -
They call themselves "flower children."
Fiction book (1995) -
The wedding procession begins: Jack and Red, as flower children, lead Uncle Ernest and Evy down the center aisle.
Fiction book (1999) -
San Francisco is the Summer of Love, where runaway flower children flock to join the hip elite and squares cruise the streets to view the human zoo.
Blog text (5) -
Documentary footage of the "Human Be-In," the "Summer of Love"—swarming flower children, war protestors.
Fiction book (1991) -
The gathering in the park was filled with flower children who shared their dreams of communal living.
Synonyms
159
6.3
A person who rejects usual rules and prefers peace and simple living
30
8.0
A person, often from the 1960s, who lives simply and rejects normal social rules
Surface Forms
Morphology
flower + child
The literal meanings of 'flower' and 'child' do not yield the culturally specific sense 'young person associated with the 1960s counterculture (a hippie)'. A B1 learner who knows the constituent words would at best guess something like a young person who likes flowers, but would not derive the historical, political and lifestyle associations without prior cultural knowledge. This idiomatic, culture-bound usage is not transparently compositional and is therefore opaque.
Etymology
Flower child comes from the 1960s, when young people wore real flowers in their hair and gave them to others as a sign of 'peace' and 'love'. So calling someone a flower child came to mean a young person who rejected normal rules and wanted a simple, shared life and 'peace'.