Beatnik, a media stereotype of the 1950s and early 1960s, was a synthesis of the more superficial aspects of the Beat Generation literary movement of the 1950s into a cartoonish (and sometimes violent) misrepresentation of the real life people and the spirituality found in Jack Kerouac's autobiographical fiction. Kerouac spoke out against this misdirected detour from his original concept. Kerouac introduced the phrase "Beat Generation" in 1948, generalizing from his social circle to characterize the underground, anticonformist youth gathering in New York at that time.

The name came up in conversation with the novelist John Clellon Holmes (who published an early Beat Generation novel, Go (1952), along with a manifesto in The New York Times Magazine: "This Is the Beat Generation". In 1954. Nolan Miller published his third novel, Why I Am So Beat (Putnam), detailing the weekend parties of four students.

The adjective "beat" was introduced to the group by Herbert Huncke, though Kerouac expanded the meaning of the term. "Beat" came from underworld slang—the world of hustlers, drug addicts and petty thieves, where Ginsberg and Kerouac sought inspiration. "Beat" was slang for "beaten down" or downtrodden, but to Kerouac, it also had a spiritual connotation as in "beatitude".

Other adjectives discussed by Holmes and Kerouac were "found" and "furtive." Kerouac felt he had identified (and was the embodiment of) a new trend analogous to the influential Lost Generation.

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