acid western

noun

A subversive and often surrealist western subgenre associated with 1960s counterculture.

Meanings

acid western1

nounacid western (plural acid westerns)

plural acid westerns

  1. Alternative letter-case form of acid Western

acid Western2

nounacid Western (countable and uncountable, plural acid Westerns)

plural acid Westerns · alternative acid western

  1. countableuncountablebroadcastingA subversive and often surrealist western subgenre associated with 1960s counterculture.

    And here it’s harder to see a parallel. Iron Man and his pals might have to evolve into the equivalent of the morally nebulous, trope-reversing, acid western period into which its predecessor slipped just prior to its long goodbye.

    2015 September 4, Ben Child, “Are superhero movies really set to go the way of the western?”, in The Guardian, →ISSN, archived from the original on 07 Jun 2022

Origin

Coined by American film critic Pauline Kael in a review of El Topo (1970).

Full word history & related roots →
Cite this entry
APA

acid western. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/acid%20western

MLA

“acid western.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/acid%20western. Accessed November 4, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “acid western,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/acid%20western.

Source: acid western on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.