bebop

1. uncountableentertainmentAn early form of modern jazz played by small groups and featuring driving rhythms and complex, often dissonant harmonies.

present singular third person bebops · participle present bebopping · participle past bebopped · past bebopped

1. intransitiveTo participate in bebop jazz, such as by dancing in a way associated with the genre.

   “The studios think we are having a horrible time out here,” said Richard Potter, a screenwriter who made “Strike Dancing,” a YouTube video showing pickets bebopping in formation to “Play That Funky Music.”

   2007 November 26, Brooks Barnes, “Laugh Lines in the Hollywood Strike”, in New York Times

   1 more example

   Six months into their career, the Clash already showed themselves the equal of any rock band that had come before them, simply by assaulting the last frontier of rock mythology: the notion that the rock audience, like some sort of bebopping proletariat, was a receptacle of goodness and hope, and that rock 'n' roll offered redemption.

   1988 September 2, Bill Wyman, “Terms of interment: retrospecting the Ramones and the Clash”, in Chicago Reader

2. informalintransitiveusuallyTo walk in an easygoing, carefree manner.

   Summer bebopped over, holding a cup of spiked punch in each hand.

   2013, Beth Kendrick, The Week Before the Wedding, Penguin, →ISBN

   2 more examples

   Typically one could spot Chet bebopping down the sidewalk in an Amish hat, or hunched over a cafeteria table discussing Calvinism or the Vietnam war.

   1986, Steve Estes, Called to Die: The Story of American Linguist Chet Bitterman, Slain by Terrorists, Zondervan Publishing Company, →ISBN

   I can't even say it was the people who board and casually whack off the top of your head with their slung-over-the-shoulder carry-ons as they obliviously bebop down the aisle to locate their seats.

   2001, Patsy Clairmont, The Best Devotions of Patsy Clairmont, Zondervan Publishing Company, →ISBN