Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. impoverished; thus hardupness, hardup(p)ishness, poverty.

1800		T.E. Hook Merton and The Sutherlands 329: He returned, and being hard up, as we say, took it into his head to break a shop-window at Liverpool, and take out some trumpery trinket stuff .
1821		‘An Amateur’ Real Life in London II 87: Captain R—is still a gay fellow, though I apprehend rather what we call hard up just now.
1830		W.T. Moncrieff Heart of London III i: Aye, we’re hard up – you’re in town, well breeched.
1831		Sydney Gaz. 10 May 3/3: If ‘hard up’ for ‘blunt,’ however, soma of them will go and sell the dogs in the streets as soon as possible after they have caught them.
1841		‘Bryan O’Lynn’ Dublin Comic Songster 18: Bryan O’Lynn was hard up for a coat.
1853		Dickens Bleak House (1991) 142: He was in want of copying work to do, and was — not to put too fine a point upon it — [...] hard up!
1860		Bell’s Life in Sydney 24 Nov. 3/1: [...] to answer the charge of being ‘hard up’ and endeavoring to improve his fortune at the expense of Mr. Wolfe Saber.
1867		J. Greenwood Unsentimental Journeys 81: Wherever you meet the poor man in and about London he is ‘hard up’.
1875		‘Aliph Cheem’ Lays of Ind (1905) 81: ‘Just now I’m a little hard up, you see’.
1876		C. Hindley Life and Adventures of a Cheap Jack 202: There were frequent failures arising from inexperience [...] or collapses from death or ‘hard-upness’.
1885		Bulletin (Sydney) 7 Mar. 22/3: [P]robably the poor girl was envious and hungry, and hadn’t seen a ham-bone, to say nothing of a ham, for Heaven knows how long. The Koburgs were then terribly hard-up.
1890		Sporting Times 11 Jan. 2: The search for oof is the proper road to ooflessness, and that there is nothing so expensive as being hard-up.
1891		N. Gould Double Event 28: Ike’s knowledge of some of the bookmakers he had met in the old land led him to believe that ‘hard-uppishness’ would scare any knight of the pencil away.
1903		J. Furphy Such is Life 267: Are you hard-up? Because I can lend you five bob till we meet again.
1914		Joyce ‘Ivy Day in the Committee Room’ Dubliners (1956) 122: Damn it, I can understand a fellow being hard up, but what I can’t understand is a fellow sponging.
1925		Wodehouse Carry on, Jeeves 71: He was generally hard up, and had an uncle who relieved the strain a bit from time to time by sending him monthly remittances.
1935		(con. 1920s) J.T. Farrell Judgement Day in Studs Lonigan (1936) 555: A lot of fellows [...] are hard up. Many of them have come around to see me asking for jobs.
1938		J.B. Booth Sporting Times 205: When Wallace joined the little staff of Town Topics he was [...] very hard up.
1941		K. Tennant Battlers 187: I pawned it when me and me old man was hard up.
1949		N. Algren Man with the Golden Arm 237: He wasn’t so hard up as some people seemed to think.
1957		C. Himes Imabelle 41: I wouldn’t even touch an ounce of it myself, no matter how hard up I was.
1959		B. Kops Hamlet of Stepney Green Act I: Anyway – I’m not that hard up – plenty more fish in the sea.
1965		C. Himes Rage in Harlem (1969) 43: [as 1957].
1971		Wodehouse Much Obliged, Jeeves 50: I asked if Tuppy was hard up, and she said he wasn’t begging his bread and nosing about in the gutters for cigarette ends.
1997		D. Farson Never a Normal Man 223: I seemed perpetually hard up.
2005		J. Stahl I, Fatty 233: Those biddies are too hard up for champagne, so they’re waggling Cokes.
2010		K. Richards Life 44: He must have been very hard up - he never, for example, bought new clothes.

2. drunk.

1984

Partridge DSUE (8th edn) 532/1: 1870–1900.

3. in fig. use, at a loss, desperate, in need of something.

1827		J. Wight More Mornings in Bow St. 40: ‘It was swipes I wanted — and not inkpots. But here pi.e. in court] I am — hard up!’.
1867		R. Whiteing Mr Sprouts, His Opinions 1: We wasn’t hard up for a sov.
1870		M.A. Barker Station Life in N.Z. 191: He was terribly hard-up for anything which he had not read.
1890		Sporting Times 22 Mar. 1/5: There are some folks so hard up for something to do with their brass that they have to chuck £100,000 a time at starting hospitals.
1900		Bulletin (Sydney) 26 May 14/1: When you come to be so hard up for literature as to treasure a jam-tin or a sauce-bottle you’ll know the value of books.
1930		J. Lait Put on the Spot 38: You mus’ be hard up for a blind fall.
1941		in G. Legman Limerick (1953) 47: Her pimp, a young fellow named Biddle, / Was seldom hard up for a diddle.
1951		J.D. Salinger Catcher in the Rye (1958) 75: The other two grools nearly had hysterics when we did. I certainly must’ve been very hard up to even bother with any of them.
1963		in T.I. Rubin Sweet Daddy 11: Say you don’t think I’m hard up [i.e. for sex] or nothing.
1970		in P.R. Runkel Law Unto Themselves 219: I was really hard up [i.e. for sex].
1981		J. Sullivan ‘Go West Young Man’ Only Fools and Horses [TV script] Look if you’re hard up for a bit of company I’ll come along, alright?
1985		Eble Campus Sl. Apr. 5: hard up – having a difficult time, unsuccessful: Anna is hard-up finding a boyfriend.

4. (W.I.) unable to attract a steady partner.

1996

Allsopp Dict. Carib. Eng. Usage.

5. (US) in need of sexual gratification, sexually frustrated [note hard-up n.³ ].

1951		D. Stivens Jimmy Brockett 174: ‘Getting any, smacker?’ I’d ask him. More often than not he’d come back at me, ‘I’ve got to climb trees to get away from it’. [...] ‘I’ll come to you for a knockdown if I get hard up’.
1965		E. Bond Saved Scene xi: Old enough t’ be ’is mother. Yer must be ’ard up!
1970		(con. 1950s) H. Junker ‘The Fifties’ in Eisen Age of Rock 2 (1970) 102: When really hard up, he would even overlook her b.o., cooties, flat chest.