Linguist Geoff Nunberg says "we’re all fluent speakers of hippie now.”
!- Start of DoubleClick Floodlight Tag: Please do not remove Activity name of this tag: UCB001CP Retargeting URL of the webpage where the tag is expected to be placed: http://unknown This tag must be placed between the. (Cross-posted from NPR Opinion. If you're into counterculture kitsch, you might want to check out the nostalgia-themed resort hotel at Walt Disney World in Florida. It features a "Hippy Dippy” swimming pool, surrounded by flower-shaped water jets, peace signs and giant letters that spell out "Peace, Man,” "Out of Sight” and "Can You Dig It?” Fifty years after the Summer of Love, that's been the fate of a lot of the language we associate with that era - faded psychedelia, sort of like acid rock and tie-dye, except that nobody ever tries to revive it. Well, slang is like that: The words come in on one tide and are swept out again on the next. But it's striking how many words from the hippie era are still with us, from "uptight” to "bummer” to "freak show. As brief as the moment was, it changed the way we think and talk.
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