The redoutable Sonny Barger, founding president of the Oakland chapter of the Hells Angels, uses the expression “lit up”, meaning “punched out” or “beaten up” throughout his memoir when describing fights. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen that expression, so what I’m wondering now is whether that’s biker slang, or Oakland working class slang, or is it something else?
“Lit up” was sports terminology for lighting up the scoreboard with big numbers, or lighting up the goal scoring lights in hockey (lights go off by goal judge when goals are scored). Anyway, when you are lighting them up in sports, you are beating the heck out of the other team, so it might be a natural trangression to use “lit 'im up” to denote kicking someone’s ass.
WAG: An equivalent of “seeing stars”?
We use it a lot in the military when referring to someone who got their ass kicked, but we also say, “I got so lit last night” or “I got so lit up at the bar” when talking about getting drunk. Can’t find an origin sorry.
vd, that’s actually what I was thinking, however alterego’s answer reminds me that Barger was a veteran, as were many other HA’s of the time. It makes sense to suppose that’s where he got it.