Less than Cool The Mainstream 1960s

Not everybody could be cool, and the slang of the predominant 1960s youth culture had words for the losers as well as the winners.

Square, a vital word of the 1950s counterculture, became by the dialectic process of slang a vital word of the 1960s predominant youth culture; it is richly paradoxical that kids whom Beats would have found quite square used the word to vilify those who were out of touch with the latest mainstream fashions, styles, and trends.

Other slang words for the losers of the in-out mentality of the 1960s were chaser (a loser who will make every possible mistake), clod, Clyde, dibble, dip (emphasis on the dull), doofus, dose, douche bag (nice talk!), farmer, nerd or nurd, seed, wimp (passive, weak), and winner (lushly ironic). You did not associate with these people if you could help it; to escape their company, you at times had to ditch them.

In the adjective department, gross was the ultimate description of anything disgusting or offensive. It generated a small cottage industry of variations, including 288 (meaning "too gross," punning on gross as a dozen dozen, and two dozen dozen-288-as two gross), gross out (to disgust) and grossery (a crude act). Other disparaging adjectives in fashion included clubby (uncoordinated), crusty (dirty, unkempt), groady (also groaty and grotty, meaning unkempt, slovenly; precursors of the Valley Girl's grody in the 1980s), grubby (deliberately scruffy), grungy (dirty, messy), out to lunch (out of touch with current styles), rank (offensive), raunchy (disgusting), scuzzy (very dirty), yesterday (out of style), and yicky (dirty, unpleasant).