The Definition of “Hooking Up”
February 13th, 2011 | Categories: Question of the Week, Relationships | 7 CommentsThis is something I’ve always wondered – how do people define the term “hooking up”?
I looked it up on Urban Dictionary to see if there was a general consensus about what the term defines, and this was the first definition I found:
Hooking up: An incredibly ambiguous phrase that drives me absolutely insane when people use it.
Example: John hooked up with Mary. (So what did they actually do? Did they meet at the park? Did they talk? Or did they duke like viagra-injected rabbits? Who knows…)
In junior high, “hooking up” essentially just meant making out. But as I got older and my friends and I got more experienced with all the possibilities of the definition of “hooking up,” we never adapted a new term. Let it be making out, messing around, or sex – no matter what it is, it’s always described as “hooking up.”
Sometimes, though, my friends and I clarify what exactly happened while hooking up. Take a conversation I had last night, for example:
Friend: I can’t go to that club tonight. So-and-so will be there and I don’t want to see him.
Me: Oh? Did you hook up with him or something?
Friend: Yeah. But we only made out. Nothing more.
In that case, what hooking up meant was crystal clear. But more often than not, I’ve found myself using “hooking up” as a blanket term for my experiences. I think it’s the safest term to use when you have to ‘fess up about something but don’t want to be in a position of kissing and telling. The ambiguity is a godsend, sometimes; if a group of girlfriends are insistent on finding out what happened, saying that you “hooked up” is enough for them to know something happened. The rest can be left to the imagination.
Question of the Week: How do you define “hooking up”? Has the definition of the term changed over time for you? Do you say you hooked up with someone, or do you use more specific terms?
Tags: opinions
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Hi, I'm Manda. I'm a college student studying communications and languages. I like to read, shop, bake, and travel. I have a tendency to listen to my favorite songs on repeat for hours on end. Sometimes I catch myself thinking in a language other than English. 
When I think of hooking up I generally assume sexy time is included but I agree it is a handy blanket term for any brief encounter.
I always thought that hooking up meant having sex. Probably because I’ve only heard it for the first time a few years ago, and am not a native speaker :P
I’ve totally had this conversation with my friends. And it depends whom you’re referring to. In college, actually, one of my friends used to specifically call it “gem hooking up” (only with my real name) when it referred to sex. But otherwise to her it just meant making out. And then one of my roommates now, if she says she hooked up with someone she means she went home with them and fooled around, but not sex. So it’s still a spectrum term, I’m just on the sex end of that spectrum, haha.
Like Emsz I’ve always interpreted “hooking up” as sex. But I’m not a native English speaker and have only heard it on TV and in movies, and I don’t know how accurate that is :P
When I hear the term “hooking up” I’ve always assumed that
it meant sex. But, that term wasn’t really popular in my teens to
20′s so perhaps I just missed it all together lol
I’ve heard “hooking up” also referred to as starting a relationship instead of sex and making out. I think it’s just a term people use when they’re confused.
Haha it’s totally the same with me and my friends – when we were younger it just meant “making out”, but over time it’s grown to mean more/sex instead.
Unless I’m on the receiving end of information – which I like to snoop further into – I generally just use it as a blanket term as well.