The intangible quality vibe was popularized in 1967 as a clipping of “vibration” in the wake of the Beach Boys’ 1966 chart-topper “Good Vibrations”. “Vibrations” meaning intangible qualities or communications, inspired by ESP, made it into the lyrics through California drug slang. Perhaps coincidentally, the cordless vibrator, also abbreviated vibe, was first marketed for sexual purposes in 1968.

Vibe and its relatives were ubiquitous enough to be called the cliche of the 1960s. Both the plural form vibes and the verb vibing, suggesting being “in tune with the vibration of the universe”, were in common use by 1970.

The word experienced a resurgence in the late 2010s, perhaps buoyed by political commentary about vibes being off and running on vibes. Novel phrases like vibe shift and vibe check were popularized as recently as 2022. Vibe coding was coined by Slovak-born AI researcher Andrej Karpathy in 2025.