Home US English a rebel without a cause

Definition of a rebel without a cause in English:

a rebel without a cause

phrase

  • A person who is dissatisfied with society but does not have a specific aim to fight for.

    ‘he was a rebel without a cause, a born mutineer’
    • ‘Lindner, writing when Storm Troopers were still a fresh memory, is concerned with the effects of Mass Culture on society, especially on the young, the rebels without a cause.’
    • ‘But those different just for the heck of it are rebels without a cause.’
    • ‘She, and the events of the past few days in London, put to shame the ludicrous, immature black-clothed rebels without a cause.’
    • ‘Meanwhile the nationalists - Scots and Welsh alike - are rebels without a cause.’
    • ‘He was the perfect rock star - a good-looking misfit, a rebel without a cause, a man-boy with a voice like howling sandpaper.’
    • ‘Suspicion at first falls on Laura's boyfriend, Bobby Briggs, captain of the football team and rebel without a cause.’
    • ‘She believes that could drain much of the poison from the region - and leave him a rebel without a cause.’
    • ‘In my youth, I thought of myself as a rebel and was, many times, a rebel without a cause.’
    • ‘Peter, an 18-year-old who lives with his parents and sister in a middle-class Toronto suburban wasteland in the early 1960s, is a rebel without a cause or a clue.’
    • ‘A true rebel without a cause, the Gemini-Sagittarius will object to anything that hints of conformity or orthodoxy.’

    Origin

    From the title of a US film, released in 1955.