Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. street robbery; bag-snatching.

1818		W. Perry London Guide 32: This brings me to speak of that next species of robbery by those who are appropriately called Scamps, called hustling.
1823		‘Jon Bee’ Dict. of the Turf, the Ring, the Chase, etc. 102: Hustling — forcible robbery, by two or more thieves seizing their victim round the body, or at the collar.

2. working as a prostitute; also attrib., adj.

1894		W.T. Stead If Christ came to Chicago! 38: The girls sat in coupled at the windows [...] If a man passed they would rap at the window and beckon him to some in. If a policeman appeared [...] all traces of hustling would disappear.
1924		G. Henderson Keys to Crookdom 408: Hustling – streetwalking.
1925		Dos Passos Manhattan Transfer 114: ‘’Ow’s ’ustlin?’ ‘Worse’n hell [...] No more of dese sailor boys and shorefront stiffs . . . . I’m gettin respectable.’.
1932		M. West She Done Him Wrong 10: She had taken it [i.e. ‘this shabby ring’ from the finger of a drunken lake-boat steward during hustling days in Chicago [Simes:DLSS].
1938		J. O’Hara Hope of Heaven 110: ‘Is she in love with you?’ ‘She offered to give up hustling for me’.
1946		Mezzrow & Wolfe Really the Blues 21: He could locate gold like a good hustling chick.
1953		W.P. McGivern Big Heat 26: Check me off as a hustling babe.
1958		Murtagh & Harris Cast the First Stone 34: We always talked about hustling. We used to play Hustlers’ Game. A girl made believe she was working the streets.
1965		’Cressey & Ward Delinquency, Crime &c. 506: As one pimp of 19 years experience puts it: [...] ‘If he is a big man in the hustling world, the law then employs any means at their command’ [i.e. of harassmewnt].
1966		C. Himes Run Man Run (1969) 69: Brock got the idea that she did a little hustling on the side.
1972		D. Claerbaut Black Jargon in White America 69: hustling v. […] 3. prostituting.
1976		Gemme & Wheeler Progress in 507: [H]ustling bars where prostitutes and officers meet as friends [Simes:DLSS].
1979		J. Rechy Rushes (1981) 15: Although this is not a hustling area, he is obviously bartering for sexmoney with an older man.
1988		D. Woodrell Muscle for the Wing 15: Sorefooted hustling gals sat on the stuffed chairs and bamboo thrones.
2004		L. Redhead Peepshow [ebook] Hustling’s something prostitutes do.

3. as sense 2, of male homosexual prostitution; also attrib., adj.

1936		B.L. Reitman Second Oldest Profession (2 edn) 258: I don’t see what good it will do to give the ‘hustling queers’ who seek trade on the boulevard literature on the evils of the subject [Simes:DLSS].
1948		M. Duberman About Time 138: [T]ough, wily boys to whom hustling is only a new twist in delinquency [Simes:DLSS].
1967		W. Churchill Homosexual Behavior 185: [Y]oung men, usually between the ages of seventeen and twenty-five, many of whom have taken to hustling as a full-time occupation [Simes:DLSS].
1969		S, Harris Puritan Jungle (1970) 129: [T]he gays [sic] streets (not necessarily the hustling ones) where two gay strangers can make contact in a strange town [Simes:DLSS].
1967		‘R. Cummings’ Bath Buddy 165: Hustling, I learned quickly, isn’t romantic [Simes:DLSS].
1978		J. Carroll Basketball Diaries 104: The fag hustling scene gets hairier and hairier all the time. I mean what happened to the old-fashioned homo who just wanted to take you home and suck your dick?
1987		C. Shively Calamus Lovers 89: [M]ale hustling may have been no less organized in Lincoln’s time than now [Simes:DLSS].
1992		R. Everett Hello Darling 100: [N]either drug abuse nor the hustling scene were as glamorous as they appeared [Simes:DLSS].

4. selling objects, ideas, one’s services etc, esp. in an aggressive manner; also attrib.

1895		Mirror of Life 21 Sept. 2/1: JACK McAuliffe, the light-weight champion, and Jack Sheehan, he of ‘tipster’ fame, have formed a combination in which the former will do the thinking and the latter the hustling.
1905		Hull Dly Mail 5 Sept. 5/5: Hustling is not an end in itself, but simply a means to an end. It is no new American idea; the ancient Egyptians practised it [and] as competition has become keener, just so much has the hustler become more necessary.
1939		D. Cecil Young Melbourne 263: William [i.e. Melbourne] got closer to truth, pierced far deeper into the significance of things, than the majority of his hustling contemporaries.
1959		H.S. Thompson letter 3 June in Proud Highway (1997) 166: Keep hustling, hustling, hustling.
1968		N. Heard Howard Street 52: I c’n make more’n that in a good day’s hustling, man.
1971		D. Goines Dopefiend (1991) 90: They were just beginning a morning of hustling.
1988		Ice-T ‘High Rollers’ 🎵 They say I’m glamorizin’ the hustlin’ hood.
1990		S. Morgan Homeboy 58: The corner of Market and Powell is a tourist hub — and a prime hustling locale.

5. living by one’s wits; also as adj.

1896		H. Blossom Checkers 40: When they got me ‘on the tram,’ I had to go to hustlin’.
1911		Stanford Interior Jrnl (KY) 18 Apr. 5/4: Beazley bought two very handsome buggies [...] from R.M. Arnold, the hustling buggy manufacturer of Danville.
1911		H.W. Odum ‘Folk-song and Folk-poetry as Found in the Secular Songs of the Southern Negroes’ in Jrnl American Folk-Lore July-Sept. 369: I’m gamblin’ for my Sady – she’s a lady; / I’m a hustlin’ coon, that’s what I am.
1933		C. Himes ‘Prison Mass’ in Coll. Stories (1990) 165: He had put on his ‘hustling jacket’ and gone out to get her some [cocaine].
1940		‘Digg Mee’ ‘Observation Post’ in N.Y. Age 30 Nov. 10/5: They [i.e. Harlem women] only know and play one game, hustling is their claim to fame.
1957		C. MacInnes City of Spades (1964) 58: ‘If you [...] don’t like the work in the Jumble post office or railways, for six pounds less taxes and insurance, then, man, you must hustle.’ ‘And what is your particular hustling?’.
1964		B. Jackson Get Your Ass in the Water (1974) 91: My old hustlin’ partner, John, he really knew the score, / he told me if I kept chippin’ I would soon be woe.
1969		R.L. Keiser Vice Lords 34: ‘Hustling’ is any activity other than legitimate employment that is aimed at making money.
1973		J. Yount Trapper’s Last Shot (1974) 80: Hustling is a matter of psychology, Jimbo.
1982		J. Ellroy Clandestine 211: [C]ontinuing to earn through construction work and golf hustling at least as much as Lorna did.
2024		E. Wald Jelly Roll Blues 3: [A]n exuberantly filthy sketch of an afternoon tryst between a hustling man and a workingman’s wife.

6. (US black) making a nervous sign at someone.

1964

R. Abrahams Deep Down In The Jungle 266: Hustling – making nervous sign at. Very different from common slang sense of term.