lost generation Definition

lost generation
noun

1. originally
The men who died in the trenches between 1914 and 1918.
2. The group of US expatriate writers living in Paris in the 1920s that included Ernest Hemingway and F Scott Fitzgerald, whose work explores and reflects the disillusionment that was felt after World War I and the concomitant breakdown of order and values.
3. now
Any generational group which is perceived to have lost or rejected traditional value systems.

Etymology: 1920s: quoted by Ernest Hemingway in The Sun Also Rises (1926) as coined in conversation by Gertrude Stein.