Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. neuroses, misery, esp. when brought on by excessive drinking (cf. hypo n.¹ ).

c.1705		Berkeley in Fraser Life (1871) 422: Hyps and such like unaccountable things confirm my doctrine.
1710		R. Steele Tatler No. 230 n.p.: Will Hazard has got the Hipps, having lost to the Tune of Five hundr’d Pound.
1729		Swift ‘The Grand Question Debated’ in Chalmers Eng. Poets XI (1810) 486/1: The doctor was plaguily down in the hips.
1738		Swift Polite Conversation 42: Her Ladyship was plaguily bamb’d; I warrant it put her into the Hipps.
1751		J. Winstanley ‘To the Revd Mr — on his Drinking Sea-Water’ in A. Carpenter Verse in Eng. in 18C Ireland (1998) 277: Pledge the proud Whale, and from ten thousand Springs / Dilute the hyp.
c.1790		‘A Drop of Dram’ Luke Caffrey’s Gost 5: I’d die of the hips if I didn’t get a sup.
1798		Sporting Mag. Nov. XIII 111/1: Now they all have the hip, / And at sea scarce a ship.
1811		Lex. Balatronicum.
1823		Egan Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
1827		Egan Anecdotes of the Turf, the Chase etc. 210: Monsieur, afflicted with the hip, / One day to England took a trip.
1830		C. Lamb Pawnbrokers’s Daughter I ii: The drops so like to tears did drip, / They gave my infant nerves the hyp.
1859		Hotten Dict. of Modern Sl. etc. 52: hyps, the blue devils.
1860		Hotten Dict. of Modern Sl. etc. (2nd edn) 159: HYPS, or hypo, the blue devils.
1873		Sl. Dict.
1956		(con. 1754–74) Settle Beulah Land 136: Ma’s headaches is not coming so frequent. I would have wrote before, but she has had the Hip so bad I have not set down for a Moment.

2. as hips, bad luck, a misfortune.

1929

W.R. Burnett Little Caesar (1932) 216: ‘They got Sam,’ said Ma. ‘Well [...] that’s hips for Sam.’.