Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (US Und.) to operate a short-change racket, to swindle, to cheat.

1823		Egan Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
1914		Jackson & Hellyer Vocab. Criminal Sl. 35: He’s crabbing a string of good lays by hyping with a deuce where a saw buck could be changed just as readily.
1931		Irwin Amer. Tramp and Und. Sl. 99: Hipe. – To cheat or short-change.
1950		Goldin et al. DAUL 96/1: Hipe, v. [...] 2. To short change or swindle by means of the hipe.

2. (also hype up ) to work up one’s emotions, to become stimulated, to make more exciting.

1916		J. Lait ‘Charlie the Wolf’ in Beef, Iron and Wine (1917) 29: Ye know, it kind o’ hypped me from de start.
1958		H. Ellison Web of the City (1983) 162: The Cherokees had been hyped to a rumble.
1979		‘Iceberg Slim’ Airtight Willie and Me 193: His spurious snoring issued to hype up her rage.
1986		C. Hiaasen Tourist Season (1987) 11: I don’t have to tell you how to hit the hype button, do I?
1998		I. Welsh Filth 160: The whole force of the state is behind you and you’re hyped up to beat insolent scum who question things with their big mouths.
2016		Skepta ‘Lyrics’ 🎵 It's not a ting to draw the ting if you wanna swing / [...] / Not a long ting to do the hype ting.
2020		G. Krauze What They Was 58: Taz [...] starts hyping up, turning to screwface the officer — fucking feds, always harrassing man, it’s coz I’m black innit.

3. (US) to overcharge; to raise a price.

1920		A. Baer H-2 Cows and O 2 Sept. [synd. col.] Coal will be hyped up to around fifteen markers a ton. You can grab it cheaper.
1926		Maines & Grant Wise-crack Dict.

4. (US black) to fool or cajole, to outsmart.

1944		Cab Calloway New Hepsters Dict. in Calloway (1976) 256: hype (n., v.): build up for a loan, wooing a girl, persuasive talk.
1944		D. Burley Orig. Hbk of Harlem Jive 107: Said Fool Number Two: ‘That ain’t so new — I’ve been hyping all the hicks’.
1959		A. Anderson ‘Blueplate Special’ in Lover Man 127: I could’t hype him.
1965		(con. 1940s) Malcolm X Autobiog. (1968) 218: No hustler could have it known that he’d been ‘hyped’, meaning outsmarted.
1970		Time 17 Aug. 32: Hype: to con (‘Don’t hype me, pig’).

5. (orig. US) to promote a person or commodity through an excess of overzealous, grandiose publicity or private advocacy, esp. in rock or show business use.

1941		Pittsburgh Courier (PA) 25 Jan. 7/1: Fannie Robinsion [is] trying to hype the ticket [sales] for the upcoming prexy’s Cruise Ball.
1968		N. Heard Howard Street 177: They hyped the public against smokin’ pot so they could kill them [...] with canceropus cigarettes and liver-destroyin’ liquor.
1972		C. Bukowski Erections, Ejaculations etc. 121: He wanted to hype the circulation, by any means.
1986		B. Geldof Is That It? 213: To hype a record into the American charts cost about $150,000 with no guarantee of success.
2007		A.C. Shepard Woodward and Bernstein 133: He often hyped stories, [movie director Alan J.] Pakula wrote, and then they didn’t pan out .
2023		(con. 1962) J. Ellroy Enchanters 84: ‘I’m just an overhyped movie star who wishes she was something else’.

6. (also hype up) to excite.

a.1948		(con. early 1930s) C. McKay Harlem Glory (1990) 78: Oh, Harlem is hyped with a different behavior.
1967		Time 1 Sept. 47: Sandy is so hyped up about the Boston opening Sept. 4 that some fear she may blow all the fuses.
1997		(con. 1970s) G. Pelecanos King Suckerman (1998) 50: Marchetti [...] laughed, got hyped on his own pantomime.
2005		B. Coleman Rakim Told Me 143: ‘It's that cool hip-hop cut-up thing that good DJs do to hype the crowd’.

7. (US Und.) to steal.

a.1949

N. Algren Little Lester’ in Entrapment (2009) 94: Nothing more than a punk who’d hypped a piece of tin [i.e. an iron] in a neighborhood department store.

8. (US campus) to annoy.

1969

Current Sl. III:3.

9. (US black) to pretend.

2007

W.D. Myers ‘the man thing’ in What They Found 127: I’d never been in jail but I knew a dozen guys who had been. They tried to hype it like it was no big thing, but I knew it was.