hip adj.
1. sophisticated, aware, in tune with events, ideas and situations; often as hip to.
![[US]](/static/img/flags/us.png "United States") | Jim Hickey 15: At this rate it’ll take about 629 shows to get us to Jersey City, are you hip? | |
| From Coast to Coast with Jack London 119: While we argued with him, the conductor got hip to our doings. | |
| [song title] Hip! Hip! | |
| New Hepsters Dict. in Calloway (1976) 256: hip (adj.): wise, sophisticated, anyone with boots on. Ex., ‘She’s a hip chick.’. | |
| ‘I Would If I Could’ 🎵 They might satisfy a square / But I’m too hip you see. | |
| Monkey On My Back (1954) 43: There were a lot of things about H he wasn’t hip to. | |
| Hiparama of the Classics 10: You look like pretty Hip Cats, You buddy with me! | |
![[UK]](/static/img/flags/uk.png "United Kingdom") | Baron’s Court All Change (2011) 24: [T]hat [i.e. drinking cider] was only to appear hip, as the Vintage Merrydown was the drink of all the sharp ones. | |
| How to Talk Dirty 177: I’m not hip to track people. | |
| Shaft 73: All that hip shit about revolution. | |
| (con. 1960s) Black Gangster (1991) 39: Every body here is hip to the stud. | |
| Life and Times of Little Richard 179: He’d been around these hip session musicians and arrangers. | |
| ‘Based on a True Story’ 🎵 If people out there not hip to the fact. | |
| Powder 12: She could pass as their hip older sister. | |
| Where Dead Voices Gather (ms.) 35: The origin of ‘hip’ whose currency was common enough for it to have appeared in print by 1904, may have derived from the classic age-old pelvic-centered, side-lying opium-smoking position, and may have been used originally as a sign of mutual recognition and reference. | |
| Hurricane Punch 10: Jeff’s hip not to paw anything. | |
| Running the Books 44: She was friendly, smartly dressed [...] clearly the hip lady in her weekly fifty-plus knitting group. | |
| Rolling Stone 14 Oct. 🌐 #MAGA! That's hashtag Make America Great Again, in case you didn't believe Mike Pence is hip. | |
| Straight Dope [ebook] [A] very straight-looking white dude is walking right at me, and I mean so straight that he’s hip. |
2. (US) insolent, cheeky.
| ‘First Offense’ in Jungle Kids (1967) 8: When somebody’s trying to give you advice, don’t go hip on him. | |
| ‘The Game’ in King Black Short Story Anthol. (1972) 304: Two stacked broads approached. Everyone attained a hip position [...] In his hip position, Herman says: ‘Hey mamma, you putty thang ... shorr look foine’. |
3. (US black) splendid, enjoyable.
| Vulture (1996) 41: ‘How ’bout a nickel bag?’ ‘Sounds hip to me.’. | |
 | Brother Ray 20: Among the kids, [the big boys] had the power, and soon I could see things would be much hipper when I got to be a big boy myself. | |
| Portable Promised Land (ms.) 161: We Words (My Favorite Things) [...] Heads. Hip. Hot. |
4. (US black) in possession of or able to supply drugs.
| ‘Honky-Tonk Bud’ in et al. Life (1976) 55: So if you want to cop, then let’s talk shop, / I’m hip and can help you score. |
In derivatives
a slang term used by those who are hip.
| Newsweek 30 Oct. 85: For most straights, press reports of the East Village murders added a sinister new word to their glossary of hipisms. |
In compounds
see hep-cat n.
In phrases
to understand, to recognize, to work out; thus get hip(ped) to oneself, to gain some self-awareness.
| in Zwilling TAD Lex. (1993) 100: Nix on the whiskey fellers. It’s on the dink and will put you there! Get ‘hip’ before it’s too late. | |
| A. Mutt in Blackbeard Compilation (1977) 149: I’m so glad you got hip to yourself at last. | |
| ‘Observation Post’ in N.Y. Age 13 July 10/3: Corinne Jackson [...] should get hipped to herself. | |
| West Side Story I vi: When you was my age; when my old man was my age; when my brother was my age! You was never my age, none a you! The sooner you creeps get hip to that, the sooner you’ll dig us. | |
| Mad mag. June 47: Let me dig if he’s been boozing, and get hip on what’s the score. | |
| House of Slammers 25: It wasn’t that long [...] before the volunteer teacher got hip. | |
| H. Huncke ‘Oral History of Benzedrine’ Huncke Reader (1998) 341: When they got hip to the pills [...] they became difficult to get. | |
| Pimp’s Rap 2: The IRS got hip to him one time, but they couldn’t find out where he lived. | |
| (con. 1962) Enchanters 277: How did the Sex Creep get hip to those specific women? |
to be sophisticated, aware.
| ‘Truckin ’round Brooklyn’ in N.Y. Age 16 Jan. 7/1: Her column [in] case you haven’t gotcha boots on, is on page 4. | |
| ‘Tain’t What You Do’ 🎵 So get your hip boots on, and then you carry on. | |
| N.Y. Amsterdam Star-News 29 Mar. 13: I was a solid square. My boots were always opened and slipped off when I walked. She showed me how to lace em up, how to wear em to my hips. | |
| Jives of Dr. Hepcat (1989) 4: All the kiddies got their invites and the sweet little old delosis drilling to the pad, all the cats are sounding their righteous squawks about their ‘hip boots’ laced in place, high and fly and too wet to dry. | |
| Jazz Lex. 246: If one’s hip boots are on, he is ready for any kind of weather, and by extension, for any eventuality. | |
| S.R.O. (1998) 86: ‘You is a square, boy. Ain’t need to be ashamed of that. Don’t have to wear no hip boots effen you ain’t breaking the man’s law’. |
(US black) to be relaxed.
| Pittsburgh Courier (PA) 4 June 11/1: The boys and gals fell in with their hip-boots unlaced and their kicks lined with dough. | |
| N.Y. Amsterdam Star-News 29 Mar. 13: I was a solid square. My boots were always opened and slipped off when I walked. She showed me how to lace em up, how to wear em to my hips. |
(US black) to the greatest extent, e.g. dressed up in one’s best clothes.
| Jives of Dr. Hepcat (1989) 1: Let all the ickies drape in shape and fall from the pad hip to the tip and most mad. |
(US) to understand, to appreciate.
| Carlito’s Way 38: You people got to hip up that this weren’t no Waldorf-Astoria. |
very fashionable, well-dressed.
| Another Day in Paradise 151: He looks [...] too hip to slip, and way too cool for school. |