"Hooking Up"

[Wilson Gray]

You also may want to check out the 1998 movie, I Got The Hookup,
starring Master P. See iMDB.com.

On Wed, May 21, 2008 at 1:24 PM, Marc Velasco <marcjvelasco at gmail.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Marc Velasco <marcjvelasco at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: "Hooking Up"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Assuming here you mean the orign of 'hooking up' as in sexual
> encounter (since that's mostly what undergrads are interested in).
> For non-sexiness, the OED has it going back to 1925 (but even then the
> usage already predicts the transactional nature of the meaning to
> come).
>
> Places to look:
>
> ** Start here: William Safire:
> http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C07E0D8153EF93BA25755C0A9669C8B63
>
> Safire dates the terms mainstreaming to 1995.
>
> Personally, I'd say the cotemporaneous drug-dealer usage (exemplified
> here by Master P) helped give the term some street cred, or currency,
> or whatever you want to call it, that helped the term 'hook-up'
> win-out over whatever other terms were competing for that meaning
> (sexual encounter) at the time.
> Master P: http://www.cduniverse.com/productinfo.asp?pid=1530461
>
> Tom Wolfe, the Charlotte Simmons novel, and apparently a collection of
> essays, neither of which I've read
>
> From what I've heard, Wolfe doesn't particularly focus on the origin
> of the term, but on the entire undergraduate social scene that has
> been built around the term (or at least the practice which it
> describes).
>
> I know it was popular for East Coast schools, but I'm wondering how
> much play the term got out west?
>
> That should get you started.  After that, I'd interview alums that
> went to school during the 1990's to see when it was introduced, how it
> spread.
>
>
> On Wed, May 21, 2008 at 12:08 PM, William Hamlin
> <whamlin at u.northwestern.edu> wrote:
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>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       William Hamlin <whamlin at U.NORTHWESTERN.EDU>
>> Subject:      "Hooking Up"
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> Northwestern University linguistics students are interested in knowing more
>> about the origin of the phrase "hooking up". Any information would be
>> greatly appreciated, responses can be sent to whamlin at northwestern.edu
>>
>> Thank you!
>>
>> William Hamlin
>> WCAS 2009
>> Northwestern University
>>
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>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
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