{"id":3587,"date":"2013-10-28T07:50:41","date_gmt":"2013-10-28T11:50:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.languagetrainers.com\/blog\/?p=3587"},"modified":"2014-02-19T16:08:02","modified_gmt":"2014-02-19T20:08:02","slug":"from-bebop-to-hipster-the-origins-of-cool-as-we-know-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.languagetrainers.com\/blog\/from-bebop-to-hipster-the-origins-of-cool-as-we-know-it\/","title":{"rendered":"From Bebop To Hipster: The Origins of \u201cCool\u201d As We Know It"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"miles\"<\/a>\u201cThat\u2019s so cool!\u201d \u201cCool beans.\u201d \u201cDon\u2019t lose your cool.\u201d\u00a0 Cool is one of the most versatile slang terms in the English language and can be used in virtually every scenario: to express wonder, amazement, joy, irony, sarcasm, or even just that the environment has become a little chilly.\u00a0 The word \u201ccool\u201d generally calls to mind teenagers circa 1990, i.e. \u201cthe cool kids\u201d who wear the best clothes, listen to the best music, throw the best parties, and have the best haircuts.\u00a0 But the term \u201ccool\u201d actually dates back to the 19th<\/sup> century, when vinyl records first made an appearance.\u00a0 Cool (same as its synonym \u201cgroovy,\u201d which hasn\u2019t enjoyed such a long running streak,), referred to a record being in the groove and playing well.\u00a0 It was later revived in the 1940s by the bebop jazz musicians (everyone\u2019s heard the somewhat outdated use of \u201ccool\u201d as in, \u201che\u2019s a real cool cat\u201d) and Beat writers to refer to someone who is unfazed and under control.<\/p>\n

This notion of \u201ccool\u201d as an aesthetic of aplomb or aloofness is thought to have entered the jazz scene through African-American musicians, who inherited it from their ancestors of the Yoruba and Igbo civilizations of West Africa.\u00a0 These civilizations followed a religious philosophy that focused on the concept of \u201citutu,\u201d or mystic coolness, a state of being gentle, generous, and mentally calm, with the ability to defuse fights and disputes.\u00a0 Similarly, African influence in Paris during the Jazz Age brought about the French term sang-froid.\u00a0 <\/i>Over the course of the 20th<\/sup> century the \u201ccool pose\u201d is thought to have evolved as a psychological defense against racism and social injustice undergone by African-American men, though in the past few years it\u2019s spread across the entirety of popular culture.<\/p>\n

Fundamentally an American word, \u201ccool\u201d has been taken up by a generation of westerners who grew up on American TV shows.\u00a0 But what are other cultures\u2019 terms for \u201ccool\u201d, whether used as an interjection, adjective, noun, or verb?\u00a0 Ireland has plenty of them: deadly, savage, class!\u00a0 <\/i>While traveling in Ecuador, I met a boy who tried to teach me the vernacular of the Ecuadorian teen scene.\u00a0 Fresco <\/i>is their version of \u201ccool,\u201d meaning fresh, which is a pretty close correspondent.<\/p>\n

\"klassno\"<\/a>Other Latin American synonyms for cool include \u201c\u00a1Chido!<\/i>\u201d from Mexico, \u201c\u00a1Bac\u00e1n!<\/i>\u201d from Colombia, and \u201c\u00a1Ch\u00e9vere!<\/i>\u201d from Venezuela.\u00a0 In German, people say geil, <\/i>which is also slang for “horny,” while in northern Germany something can be declared to be \u201cder Hammer,\u201d meaning that it\u2019s so great it beats everything else.\u00a0 In Italian, when excited or impressed by something, one would exclaim, \u201cFigo!<\/i>\u201d or, \u201cChe figata!<\/i>\u201d\u00a0 The I\u00f1upiak language of the hunter-gatherer I\u00f1upiat people on the coast of northern Alaska will say, \u201cAarigaa!<\/i>\u201d or \u201cUimaittuq!<\/i>\u201d while in Japan teens are saying, \u201cShibui!<\/i>\u201d or \u201cSugoi!<\/i>\u201d\u00a0 Russians will generally say, \u201c\u043a\u043b\u0430\u0441\u0441\u043d\u043e!\u201d<\/p>\n

From its esoteric origins, cool has become a nearly universal expression, so mainstream that with the properly sarcastic intonation it can be used to mean the exact opposite.\u00a0 (There is no reply so withering and guaranteed to shut somebody up, as a monotone, \u201cCool story, bro,\u201d reinforced with a sneer and an eye-roll.)\u00a0 Ubiquitous in movies, television, radio, and the internet, with parents picking it up from their kids and teenagers worldwide picking it up from exported American media, \u201ccool\u201d is undoubtedly here to stay.<\/p>\n

What other ways can you think of to say, \u201ccool\u201d?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThat\u2019s so cool!\u201d \u201cCool beans.\u201d \u201cDon\u2019t lose your cool.\u201d\u00a0 Cool is one of the most versatile slang…","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,126,619,489,608],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-educational","category-french-2","category-italian","category-russian-2"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.languagetrainers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.languagetrainers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.languagetrainers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.languagetrainers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.languagetrainers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3587"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.languagetrainers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3587\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3704,"href":"https:\/\/www.languagetrainers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3587\/revisions\/3704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.languagetrainers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.languagetrainers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.languagetrainers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}