Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (orig. US) tense, nervous, angry, excited.

[1886		S.W. Mitchell Roland Blake 17: I don’t het up easy [DA]].
1900		Ade More Fables in Sl. (1960) 97: When you’re Het Up you’re just as like as not to Raise Ned.
1908		H. Green Maison De Shine 79: It’s flying in the face of Heaving to git the stummick all het up in the hot weather.
1912		J. London Smoke Bellew Pt 8 🌐 I’m all het up [...] I’m real sweaty. An’ now what ’r’ we goin’ to do with this ambulance outfit?
1927		(con. 1900s) S. Lewis Elmer Gantry 176: If he’d only stuck in a couple literary allusions, and lambasted the saloon-keepers more, he’d ’ve had ’em all het up.
1932		D.W. Lovelace King Kong 62: ‘What ever happened ashore to get that cold old turtle so het up?’.
1937		P. Cheyney Dames Don’t Care (1960) 37: Don’t get het up because it won’t get you no place.
1940		E. Curry Hysterical Hist. of Aus. 40: I’m real het up about the business.
1948		A. Wright Under the Whip 8: I wouldn’t get too het-up about it if I were you.
1950		(con. 1936–46) K.S. Prichard Winged Seeds (1984) 70: Queer, isn’t it [...] that we should be so het-up about Spain?
1952		W.R. Burnett Vanity Row 49: ‘I mean, she’d be worrying how to knock me off. Or trying to get me het up all the time so’s I’d pop’ [ibid.] 52: ‘He just thought she’d be good for the place. And she was. I never saw so many heated up guys’.
1954		Picture Post 13 Nov. 9: I asked him what the secret was – when other people get so ‘het up’ by all the slings and arrows of casual criticism.
1968		P. Barnes Ruling Class I ii: Tucker seems het up.
1970		T. Parker Frying-Pan 19: You ask him in front of everybody else what he got het-up with you about over something.
1992		K. Lette Llama Parlour 10: Everybody gets so het up over kids who muck up.
1998		A. Warner Sopranos 124: Why am I so het up about what people think of me.
2021		J. Ellroy Widespread Panic 179: The Vice cops [...] got het up to hurl some hurt.
2024		J. Meades Empty Wigs (t/s) 781: [W]e went inside for a good old heart to heart which basically came down to her getting all het up.

2. sexually aroused.

1935		(con. 1920s) J.T. Farrell Judgement Day in Studs Lonigan (1936) 759: How could a guy help getting het up when a dame did everything she could to tantalise him?
1962		B. McGhee Cut and Run (1963) 106: I was far too interested in my companion to pay much attention. By the time we left I was all het up.