angry young man a young man who feels and expresses anger at the conventional values of the society around him.

☞ Originally, this term referred to a member of a group of socially conscious writers in Britain in the 1950s, in particular the playwright John Osborne. The phrase, the title of a book (1951) by Leslie Paul, was used of Osborne in the publicity material for his play Look Back in Anger (1956), in which the characteristic views of the angry young men were articulated by the anti-hero Jimmy Porter.