"hook up with" in England ...

[Wilson Gray]

On Wed, Jan 16, 2013 at 1:36 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
> Not originating there, though, as far as I know.  The "hooking up with" part, I mean--for all I know, the foam part of may indeed be unique to Old Blighty (and perhaps explains the Stiff Upper Lip).  The OED entry, at Draft additions December 2005--
>
> to hook up
> orig. and chiefly U.S. Cf. sense 4e.
>  1. intr. To get married or become involved in a romantic relationship; to engage in sexual activity. Usu. with with.
>
> --doesn't include British entries, FWIW, and I don't have my HDAS H-O on me at the moment, but I would hazard a guess that the sexually enriched (but foamless) "hook up with" sense is U.S. in origin.  It is just a guess, though.

A foamed nightclub was featured on CSI in 2003 in the episode, "Lady
Heather's Box." Likewise, _hook up with_ "have sex with" precedes even
that. I was on the losing end of a discussion here of precisely that
meaning as an extension of the older, if not the original, meaning of
"hook(-)up," "connect with someone via cellphone, the cellphone
itself," as exemplified by the plot of the 1998 neo-blaxploitation
movie, I GOT THE HOOK-UP. According to the Christian Movie Guide, this
was "… a rank, distasteful, obscenity-laden story of two swindling
businessmen who inadvertently pull down an urban drug-dealer,
following in the gutter of other black-protagonist, foul comedies such
as SENSELESS and BOOTY CALL"

OTOH, IMO, all three were quite entertaining, though somewhat overly
farcical, at times.
--
-Wilson
-----
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint
to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-Mark Twain

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