Jack Kerouac coined the phrase “Beat Generation” in 1948.
Kerouac used the expression in conversation with fellow writer John Clellon Holmes to describe a group of young writers and friends who felt exhausted, alienated, and outside the dominant postwar culture. The word “beat” could suggest both weariness and being beaten down, while Kerouac also connected it with spiritual ideas about beatitude.
The phrase did not immediately name a large literary movement. It gained broad public recognition after Holmes published the novel Go in 1952 and wrote the influential essay “This Is the Beat Generation” the same year. Beat culture became especially visible after the publication of works such as Howl and On the Road in the mid-1950s.
The date 1948 refers to the phrase’s early use by Kerouac, not to the publication of a single founding Beat book.