(I did a search and couldn’t find an earlier thread)
I know people have different interpretations of what it means to “hook up” with someone. If you heard someone say “I hooked up with a guy/girl over the weekend,” or you were telling someone else about having “hooked up,” what meaning would you infer/intend? Please include if you are male or female. Thanks!
It means to “get together.” Whether it means to get together in the carnal sense, or in the “becoming an item” relationship sense, or in a totally nonsexual sense, depends upon the context. (male, 37)
I’d say hooking up means engaging in any sexual activity on the continuum between making out and having sex, including the endpoints. It usually refers to casual encounters, although getting together with exes also counts.
If someone says they “hooked up” with someone, I assume they mean sex. Not making out, not meeting for coffee, not hanging out somewhere, but having sex. This is the way I’ve always heard the term used.
Hooking up does include making out and “heavy petting”. But it must have a skanky element to it. A magical first kiss is not a hook up. Making out with some drunk girl in a bar is a hook-up.
On the other hand, I could say “I’m hooking up with some friends this weekend for a movie”. Which unfortunately would probably not include any sort of sexual or presexual activity at all. It all depends on the context.
Of course, there’s also the age-old observation that anything at all can be made to sound sexual, if you know what I mean.
This is true. Another good thing about the phrase is that it can be used to convey the fact that naked sexual things happened without going into specifics. Maybe you had intercourse, maybe you had oral sex, maybe you just sat facing and threw olives at each others’ genitals (my personal favorite). If you don’t want to go into details, it’s a nice vague catch-all term.
I’ve used it both ways, once within the same conversation.
I girl/previous best friend I hadn’t spoken to for years, “Yeah, I’ve been hooking up with tons of girls, you would be proud… … … so we should hook up!”
Oh, you just made me realize what I miss most about not owning a TV - “Whose Line Is It Anyway!”
As for the OP - ‘Hooking up’ has always meant sex to me; not just kissing or heavy petting, but sex. Usually the casual kind.
I’ve also heard, and used, ‘hooking up’ to mean ‘getting together with friends.’ All about the context.
It’s a generational thing. For us old fogies, it means “meeting” with someone. For the younger set, it’s sex. I had a fogey friend correct me when I used the term in the “meeting” form, and it just sounded weird coming from someone in her late 40s.
If you say to someone (opposite sex or not), “I’ll be in town this weekend. Let’s hook up.” It means “let’s get together, have dinner, go ride unicycles, etc.”
Otherwise, it’s sexual. Particularly past tense. You’re a guy who hooked up with a girl? Sex.
If over the age of 30, “Hook Up” refers to the act of attaching some sort of vehicle to some other sort of vehicle. Or perhaps to obtaining some sort of phone, gas, water or electric service for one’s building.
If under 30 or so, apparantly it refers to a social engagement that will invovle, with high likelihood, some sort of sexual interplay.
Among some people, “hooking up” has a mere meaning of “to meet up”.