"Hook up" = have casual sex?

[Laurence Horn]

At 11:23 AM -0500 1/26/06, Wilson Gray wrote:
>Today's _judge Mathis Show_:
>
>Male defendant: "I've known her since we were in grade school and we
>of only been friends."
>
>Female plaintiff:  "But we *have* hooked up!"
>
>Defendant: "That's true."
>
>Judge: "I don't understand what point you're trying to make, ma'am."
>
>FWIW, both people were white.
>
>Till now, I've thought of a "hook-up" as a real relationship that
>includes sex and not as a term that includes random acts of casual sex
>within a "friendship with privileges." Perhaps I need to get out more.

Or lurk among undergraduates.  Students have been supplying this as a
term of art for several years in my new words lexicon--suggesting
that this use of "hook-up" is one they encounter when they come to
Yale (who says education isn't broadening?).  My favorite cite
demonstrating both the wider and narrower use of the term is this
exchange, old enough for me to have noted it in a paper I published
in 1993:

A:  Did you hook up?
B:  Yeah, we hooked up.
A:  Did you hook UP hook up?
B:  No, we just hooked up hooked up.

(A, who supplied the datum, was African-American, but I don't think
that was particularly relevant, as I've received similar, though less
eloquent, cites from students of a variety of backgrounds.)

larry

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