Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun informal A noticeable shift in society or culture in response to the activities or tastes of younger members of the culture.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From youth ("young people") + quake, by analogy with earthquake

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Examples

  • From 1965 to 1971, it was the center of the so-called youthquake, representing the best of new thinking in the social sciences, in psychodynamics, in systems theories.

    I Feel Earthquakes More Often Than They Happen Amy Wilentz 2006

  • From 1965 to 1971, it was the center of the so-called youthquake, representing the best of new thinking in the social sciences, in psychodynamics, in systems theories.

    I Feel Earthquakes More Often Than They Happen Amy Wilentz 2006

  • Baby boomers can remember with a shudder all those psychedelicized, lets-try-and-be-hip Hollywood "youthquake" movies in the late '60s.

    Romancing The Stoned 2008

  • Life has never been the same since that "youthquake" of forty years ago.

    The Veterans of Domestic Disorders Memorial P. J. O'Rourke 2003

  • Life has never been the same since that "youthquake" of forty years ago.

    The Veterans of Domestic Disorders Memorial P. J. O'Rourke 2003

  • Time has an interesting piece on the "youthquake" powering Egypt's protests right now.

    The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com The Huffington Post News Editors 2011

  • Time has an interesting piece on the "youthquake" powering Egypt's protests right now.

    The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com The Huffington Post News Editors 2011

  • Time has an interesting piece on the "youthquake" powering Egypt's protests right now.

    The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com The Huffington Post News Editors 2011

  • Founders of nonprofits, they are in the vanguard of what Jourdan Urbach, 18, the oldest and most outspoken in the group, described as a "youthquake" of charity among their generation

    STLtoday.com Top News Headlines 2010

  • Also displayed are some of the clothes they introduced to the mainstream: The black gown with a white sash worn by model Dovima, standing between two elephants, in a Richard Avedon photo; the topless bathing suit Rudi Gernreich made in 1964 that, as demonstrated by Peggy Moffitt in a William Claxton photo, drew a sharp line between the elegant look of 1950s models and the "youthquake" of the '60s; and Brooke Shields' second-skin Calvin Klein jeans from 1980 that she wore so famously at the age of 15.

    columbiatribune.com stories 2009

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