Jack Kerouac coined the phrase “Beat Generation” in a 1948 conversation with John Clellon Holmes.
Kerouac used “beat” to describe a postwar group of young writers and artists who felt exhausted, alienated, and detached from conventional American life. The word also carried associations with beatitude, suggesting spiritual seeking rather than simple defeat.
John Clellon Holmes helped bring the phrase into public discussion through his 1952 article “This Is the Beat Generation,” published in The New York Times Magazine. That article helped establish the label before Kerouac’s novels made it internationally famous.
The phrase is sometimes incorrectly credited to Holmes because he popularized it in print. Kerouac, however, is generally identified as the person who coined it in conversation. The label later became associated with Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Gregory Corso, and other writers linked to the Beat movement.