1950s Slang For Cool (4 Examples!)

Common terms for cool in the 1950s included the quintessentially mid-century term “ginchy”, as well as terms you might sometimes hear today like “groovy” but which were coined at the time. Other common terms for cool at the time included words like “slick” or “copacetic”. “Hip” was also very common at this time.

There were a few important slang terms for cool at this time, then.

Some of them have survived today, but at the same time, some of them would sound very odd and archaic to modern ears.

Nevertheless, a lot of these are really great slang terms that we should even bring back.

Let’s find out more.

1950s Slang For Cool

What was slang for “cool” in the 1950s?

There were a variety of slang terms that could be used to mean “cool” in the 1950s.

Ginchy

One of the most common and quintessentially 1950s of these terms was the word “ginchy,” one which you will certainly never hear today.

If something was ginchy then it was very cool in one way or another, and this was used mostly by younger people although older generations certainly picked up the term to an extent, too.

Groovy

Another really important term in the 1950s for cool was “groovy”.

While this one is still widely understood today, not many people use it–or at least most people think of it as having a more specific meaning.

In the 1950s, though, it could be used to refer to anything that was cool in one way or another.

It was a much more general slang term then without the specific connotations it has today.

Slick

One very common though somewhat more specific slang term for cool in the 1950s was “slick”.

Cool itself can, of course, have multiple definitions, and this was the sense of cool that emerged around this time.

To be “slick” usually meant a suave, fashionable man, smooth talking and often good with the ladies.

It could even be a nickname for such a man.

Hip

SImilarly, the term “hip” was largely popularized during the 1950s.

This again meant someone or something that was particularly cool and fashionable, a person who kept up with fashions or even just a thing that was in fashion, like a style of clothing.

Where did all these terms come from?

Why did people say “ginchy” in the 1950s?

Unfortunately, we really have no idea where the term “ginchy” comes from, etymologically speaking.

The term had been in use since the 1930s, though its earlier sense was quite different, meaning an attractive young woman.

It endured in this sense until the 1950s when it came to mean “cool” in a broader sense.

Again, though, we really have no idea where the word derives from.

It may simply have been a nonsense word that caught on in the early 20th Century to mean something very good or cool, we may never know unless we discover older references to the term.

Why did people say “groovy” in the 1950s?

The origin of the term “groovy” is much clearer.

It is first attested in this sense of very good or cool in 1937, and was originally a piece of American jazz slang.

This derived from the slang term “in the groove,” meaning you are performing very well, and is attested from 1932.

It was simply natural, then, to shorten the term down into a more easily usable term.

It was popularized during the 1950s and 60s where it was used more broadly by Americans, particularly by teenagers in the late 1940s and then it really took off in the 50s.

Why did people say “slick” in the 1950s?

The term “slick” obviously relates simply to the more literal sense of the word slick, which is something very smooth and without bumps or irregularities.

To be “smooth” means to be cool in a very specific kind of way–again, usually it means to be confident in talking to women.

By the 1950s, it had come to have this broader sense of a cool man, someone who was fashionable and in the know.

By 1959, it had come to mean someone who was able to swindle and smooth-talk people with their charisma.

Why did people say “hip” in the 1950s?

The term “hip” is another one that most likely ultimately derives from African-American slang.

It is first recorded in 1904 as having the sense of “well informed”, and this was probably a variant of the term “hep”, which had precisely the same meaning.

This, in turn, was said to be underworld slang.

Over the course of the first half of the 20th Century, it came to shift in meaning slightly.

Though it still meant “informed”, the idea was that you were informed about cool things like fashion and that you had confidence in yourself.

It was most popular during the 1950s among the whole population of the United States.

So, there were certainly a handful of different terms that could be used for cool in the 1950s.

Indeed, the very idea of what it meant to be “cool” in the 1950s was changing, and the concept as we know it today was really emerging at this time.

It’s interesting, then, that many of the slang terms for cool from this time have not survived to the modern day.

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