Beatnik is a simple stack-oriented esoteric programming language, by Cliff L. Biffle. A Beatnik program consists of any sequence of English words. Each word is assigned the score one would get for it in a Scrabble game. The value of the score determines what function is performed. Functions include pushing the score of the next word onto the stack, testing the stack and skipping forward or backward in the program and other stack operations.

The interpreter reads the words in the poem, ignoring punctuation and whitespace and newlines. Some functions are one word, other functions have an argument (they are two-word functions). Two-word functions are described below in the form "5,n". This means both the word whose value is 5 and the next word (whose value is 'n') are read.

Here are the scrabble letter values, for reference.

A "Hello World" example in the Beatnik language.