Cool (aesthetic)
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Cool is an aesthetic of attitude, behavior, comportment, appearance, style and Zeitgeist. Because of the varied and changing connotations of cool, as well its subjective nature, the word has no single meaning. It has associations of composure and self-control (cf. the OED definition) and is often used as an expression of admiration or approval.
Cool Rules: Anatomy of an Attitude (2000) by Dick Pountain, David Robins
- What do Humphrey Bogart with a cigarette, Bertholt Brecht, Marlene Dietrich's cheekbones, Billie Holiday, James Dean, Lenny Bruce's irony, Eldridge Cleaver, Chrissie Hinde, heroin and gangsta rap all have in common? They are, for lack of a more precise word, cool.
- Cool is by no means solely an American phenomenon, although its modern manifestation was incubated among black American jazz musicians during the 1930s and 1940s and finally injected into white youth culture during the 1950s by Elvis Presley and rock 'n' roll. --Cool Rules: Anatomy of an Attitude (2000, page 12)
See also
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