Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(a) to light a pipe, cigar or cigarette.

1861		T. Hughes Tom Brown at Oxford (1880) 532: ‘I suppose I may light up’, said Drysdale [...] pulling out his cigar-case.
1897		Boy’s Own Paper 13 Nov. 98: ‘You smoke, don’t you, Balderson?’ [...] ‘Very well, then, light up.’.
1901		Boy’s Own Paper 27 Apr. 471: Producing a cheroot, I proceeded to ‘light up’.
1914		Bulletin (Sydney) 10 Dec. 48/2: Cigars were thrown away, but the one Scot in the party who had only just ‘lit up’ cannily extinguished his weed and put it into one of this waistcoat pockets.
1928		R. Carr Rampant Age 136: ‘Let’s light up,’ grunted Art, [...] extracting his cigarette case.
1931		E.T. Bliss Saraband (1986) 12: The uncles and Aunt Elise lit up, nobody else smoked.
1953		W. Brown Run, Chico, Run (1959) 8: A cigarette; a plain-clothes waiting to make a pull wouldn’t light up.
1963		‘Nino Culotta’ Gone Fishin’ 89: They ‘light up’ cigarettes; they say ‘mind out’ when there is danger; they ‘jack up’ when they wish to do nothing.
1983		P. Devlin All of us There 136: They go into the fields behind the house to ‘light up’, as smoking is always called.
1999		Guardian Rev. 23 July 7: He even asks whether I mind if he lights up.
2009		J. Joso Soothing Music for Stray Cats 87: Happy enough, I lit up and walked on.

(b) (US) to have a drink; to become drunk.

1908

K. McGaffey Sorrows of a Show Girl Ch. vii: She was all alone, a stormy night, a bottle of Scotch and a syphon. Why not light up?

(c) (US drugs) to take cocaine.

1922

E. Murphy Black Candle 228: A soldier-fellow whom I know boasts that he was in jail for a month and ‘lit up’ every day.

(d) (US drugs) to smoke marijuana.

1936		Stuff Smith ‘Here Comes the Man with the Jive’ 🎵 Whenever you’re feeling small / Don’t care for this life at all / Light up and get really tall / Here comes the man with the jive.
1946		Mezzrow & Wolfe Really the Blues 51: He’d light up and get real high. [Ibid.] 372: light up: smoke marihuana.
1958		Mad mag. Sept.–Oct. 11: We light up behind the garage. Crazy, man.
1959		Murtagh & Harris Who Live In Shadow (1960) 31: I felt so easy inside after I’d lighted up.
1969		R.R. Lingeman Drugs from A to Z (1970) 143: light up [...] To smoke marijuana.
1971		M. Novotny Kings Road 146: They sat back on the sofa and lit up.
1980		(con. 1940s–60s) H. Huncke ‘Whitey’ in Eve. Sun Turned Crimson (1998) 208: Would you like to smoke a joint? [...] Let’s cut down toward the showers at the other end, and light up.
1997		P. Cornwell Hornet’s Nest 53: West and Mildred lit up one night on the tennis courts.
2003		Hashbash.com 🌐 ****WARNING! THIS IS A SMOKE-IN**** No, it is not legal (yet) to smoke marijuana at the HASH BASH. [...] We do realize that some of you will come and as an act of civil disobedience LIGHT UP A BIG STINKY FAT ONE.

(e) (drugs) to supply someone with drugs, usu. marijuana.

1946		Mezzrow & Wolfe Really the Blues 215: Pretty soon all Harlem was after me to light them up.
1956		‘Raymond Thorp’ Viper 136: I encouraged her to smoke, lighting her up more and more until she had a real taste for it [Ibid.] 192: Numbers of [black immigrants] take a perverted satisfaction from ‘lighting up’ a white girl.

(f) to smoke a crack pipe.

1993		A. Rodriguez Spidertown (1994) 6: You in the [crack] business an’ you won’t let me light up?
2001		J. Stahl Plainclothes Naked (2002) 241: After McCardle lit him up, Tony sucked in a lung-numbing hit.

(a) to reach orgasm.

1961

R. Gover One Hundred Dollar Misunderstanding 75: I shift gears! Yeah! My bumblebee goes an gits him a lil french honey an I toot my whistle! Yeah! He got me lit up an flipfloppin.

(b) (US) to arouse someone sexually.

1967		‘Iceberg Slim’ Trick Baby (1996) 137: I got my money’s worth after I lit her up.
2021		S.A. Crosby Razorblade Tears 232: Who talks about it ain’t Adam and Steve, it’s Adam and Eve [...] when the whole time he was lighting it up with the T in LGBTQ?

(c) (US) to shoot, destroy with gunfire.

1967		P. Thomas Down These Mean Streets (1970) 16: You’d smack him down like Whiplash does in the cowboy flick or really light him up like Scarface in that gangster picture — swoon, crack, bang, bang, bang, short-nose, snub-nose pistol, and a machine gun, and a poor fuckin’ loudmouth is laid out.
1987		(con. 1967) E. Spencer Welcome to Vietnam (1989) 55: If you want to light some guy up, there is no better way than with an M-16.
1997		G. Sikes 8 Ball Chicks (1998) 136: I shot at people. When I got angry, I’d go out and light someone up and get my release. It was my high.
2006		F.X. Toole Pound for Pound 189: He’d light up the Cavazos in the San Nacho first.
2012		Skepta ‘2+2x2’ 🎵 If you’re talking war then it’s gun crime, light up your face like sunshine.
2019		N. Walker Cherry 112: The last Humvee turned so as to block the road off, and the white sedan didn’t try to go around. If it had it would have been lit up.
2020		Twitter 31 May 🌐 The Media will never show this! National guard and MPD sweeping the street. Shooting them on their own front porch. Yelling ‘light em up’.
2022		Digga D. ‘Alter Ego’ 🎵 I lit up that crib, go ask **** / I slapped it at ****, I slapped it at ****.