Beat Generation
Kerouac introduced the phrase "Beat Generation" in 1948 to characterize a perceived underground, anti-conformist youth movement in New York. The name arose in a conversation with writer John Clellon Holmes. Kerouac allows that it was Huncke, a street hustler, who originally used the phrase "beat", in an earlier discussion with him. The adjective "beat" could colloquially mean "tired" or "beaten down" within the African-American community of the period and had developed out of the image "beat to his socks", but Kerouac appropriated the image and altered the meaning to include the connotations "upbeat", "beatific", and the musical association of being "on the beat", and "the Beat to keep" from the "Beat Generation" poem.
Offbeat generation
The Offbeat generation was a loose association of like-minded writers working across different styles but united by their opposition to a mainstream publishing industry driven by marketing departments. The term—coined by Andrew Gallix in in February 2006—was a pun on the Beat Generation but more likely to be associated with the Chemical generation immediately before it (who were anthologised at the "Repetitive Beat Generation" also).