Green’s Dictionary of Slang

hipster n.

also hepster
[hip adj. + -ster sfx; black use dropped by 1940s]

1. (orig. US black) one who espouses the fashionable Bohemian stance of the period; the essence was a conscious downplaying of emotional display, a stance poss. facilitated by heroin addiction.

[US]Pittsburgh Courier (PA) 27 Aug. 11/1: The real sender came when he booted ‘After You’re Gone’ [...] I thought I was a hepster but I found myself padding the ground pads along with the rest.
[US]A. Lomax Mister Jelly Roll (1952) 233: Jelly Roll now had backing in his disputes with the ‘hipsters’ and ‘hot jive boys’.
[US]‘William Lee’ Junkie (1966) 57: A young Italian hipster named Ray used to come to the bar every day.
[US]W. Brown Teen-Age Mafia 15: Little brats who thought they were hipsters when they didn’t even know which end was up.
[UK]T. Taylor Baron’s Court All Change (2011) 72: A genuine hipster of the female variety.
[US]L. Bruce How to Talk Dirty 5: My vocabulary [...] is usually flavored with the jargon of the hipster.
[US]E. Bunker No Beast So Fierce 85: I watched him depart [...] one arm swinging exaggeratedly, shoulders rolling in a hipster’s stroll.
[US]J. Ellroy Brown’s Requiem 72: ‘Shake it, daddy, what else do you want to know?’ he said. Besides suffering from terminal cancer, he was suffering from terminal hipsterism.
[Aus]P. Doyle (con. late 1950s) Amaze Your Friends (2019) 14: Max Perkal and his band of would-be hipsters [...] accounted for about seventy per cent of the total demand for Indian hemp.
[UK]N. Cohn Yes We have No 31: He seems the complete jazz hipster, all grace and irony.
[UK]Guardian Guide 19–25 Feb. 6: It’s a password to other hipsters that he has records by Chet Baker and Sonny Rollins.

2. in 21st century use, a liberal, culturally orientated youth cult for those under 30, often in creative occupations; seen as the current evocation of middle-class counter-cultural aspirations and fashions and praised or derided accordingly .

in Urban Dict. 🌐 Hipsters a subculture of men and women typically in their 20's and 30's that value independent thinking, counter-culture, progressive politics, an appreciation of art and indie-rock, creativity, intelligence, and witty banter.
[US]M. Lacher On the Bro’d 87: [L]ong-haired, lame-ass annoying hipsters straight off planes from Brooklyn.
[UK]Eve. Standard (London) 4 Apr. 44/3: The wiry, T-shirted creative has the look of a hipster.
[US]S.A. Crosby Blacktop Wasteland 202: A week ago, he was snorting coke off some hipster chick’s titty’.