QUERY: This one's gonna be fun...

[Grant Barrett]

On Thursday, May 25, 2000, Kathleen Miller <millerk at NYTIMES.COM> wrote:
>Safire's been outta college for more years than I've been alive. Me, only
>seven years have passed, but when he asked me - "what's the phrase kids are
>using today to mean 'getting to first base'?" - mugging, scamming, and
>hooking up all seemed terribly out of fashion.
>
>Those of you who still have contact with people under 30 - what
>say you?

I'm 29, but I returned to school last year to finish the long-ignored bachelor's.
I've been keyed into the new lingo and, frankly, it ain't much different than when I
first went to school in 1988.

"Mugging and scamming" to me are terms about the process of getting someone into an
intimate situation. "Getting to first base" is about the physical contact that
happens afterwards. Not quite the same thing. "Snogging" is a good synonym for "getting to
first base."

"Scoping" is still used in a trawling/trolling/on the prowl sense, but also if
someone gives you the onceover, he or she is scoping you.

As far as I can tell, at Columbia University "scoring" is a nice, vague standby term
that covers the range from kissing to petting to groping to doing the nasty, in the
same way that "hooking up" does. It's all about context.

While we're here, and I'd love to see Safire use this just for the pure delight of
the contrast between his demeanour and the phrase, "cock blocking" is worth
mentioning. Cock blocking is when one guy cuts into another guy's action, particularly if guy A
has done all the softening of the woman and guy B comes in at the end to sweep her
away. It does happen.