A Is for Acid, G is for Grok

In John Bassett McCleary's book, "freak" is "a self-denigrating term used by hippies to describe themselves." And "flower power" is "pacifism, the turning of one's cheek."

That's because McCleary's book is The Hippie Dictionary, a 720-page archive of a now-vanishing lexicon.

"I started out carrying a pad of paper and pen, and writing down every word that came to me in a conversation, book, or movie. That took over five years," the author says. "I then started writing out definitions that I remembered. Later, I went to the library and dug into other slang and ethnic dictionaries to verify my definitions." That's when McCleary was startled to discover how many words on his list had never before been officially defined: "I also realized that much of the language of the time consisted of phrases — words combined to form new ideas or feelings, such as 'right on,' 'far out,' 'get it on.'"

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I don't really know why exactly, but words from this era still make me queasy. Other people would have described me as a hippie. (It's hipp-IE, not hipp-Y.) I never uttered the phrase "right-on". And "far out"? -- maybe twice. "Get it on"? Ne-ver. We said "ball" which wasn't quite as crass as "fucking". ha!

In my opinion these phrases and idioms were repeated by the media and were used in movies and eventually perpetuated by weekend hippies or late bloomers but for some reason I found them cringe-worthy and embarrassing. To me, someone who hit on all the hippie slang was probably a narc; which reminds me of lots of fun stories for another time. Good times.