"Hook up" = have casual sex?

[Wilson Gray]

Aw, geez, Lar. Prior to 1993?! Damn! I'm way older than I thought I was. ;-)

-Wilson


On 1/26/06, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: "Hook up" = have casual sex?
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 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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