Green’s Dictionary of Slang

to caress (usu. a woman) sexually.

[c.1915		in P. Smith Letter from My Father (1978) 60: I had many ‘feeling’ parties with various women in the subway].
1926		A.C. Inman 28 Feb. diary in Aaron (1985) 294: Married the man she did because he was the only one she knew wasn’t always ‘playin’ aroun’ to feel up my legs, an’ such like’.
1930		(con. 1900s–10s) Dos Passos 42nd Parallel in USA (1966) 76: She’s awful hot. Jeez, I thought she was going to feel me up.
1942		H. Miller Roofs of Paris (1983) 115: Feeling her up, I lift her dress up until I have her ass bare.
1956		W. Burroughs letter 13 Oct. in Harris (1993) 335: I’m off to this restaurant where all the waiters and the cook are Arabian Fruits who keep feeling up the clientele.
1963–74		B. Humphries Barry McKenzie [comic strip] in Complete Barry McKenzie (1988) 24: That Aussie turd’s feeling up our Blanchie.
1965		H. Huncke in Huncke’s Journal (1998) 15: He will entice them [i.e. two men] up to his court where he surreptitiously feels them up all the time.
1966		P. Willmott Adolescent Boys of East London (1969) 56: We started kissing and I started feeling her up and that led on to it.
1978		R. Price Ladies’ Man (1985) 71: I started feeling myself up.
1987		R. Campbell Alice in La-La Land (1999) 177: Why haven’t you tried to feel me up?
1990		S. Morgan Homeboy 72: She was feeling up Sylvester Stallone and scowling at the tart towering at his side.
1995		J. Cameron Vinnie Got Blown Away 129: Then when Sharon got thirteen he started feeling her up.
2003		A.N. LeBlanc Random Family 131: She conjured up aches and pains for the cute prison doctor in the hope that she’d get felt up.
2007		R. Milward Apples (2023) 81: Debbie was jiggling her knees while Gaz felt her up.
2012		(con. 1980s) I. Welsh Skagboys 270: Anne-Marie Combe [...] who I felt up in the Goods Yard years ago whin we wir fill ay voddy.
2015		L. Berney Long & Faraway Gone [ebook] Feeling each other up in the back row.
2018		E. Acevedo Poet X 28: I’m just saying, I’m ready to stop being a nun. Kiss a boy, / shoot, I’m ready to creep with him behind a stairwell and let him / feel me up.
2022		I. Fitzgerald Dirtbag, Massachusetts 72: Terry had felt up one of their sisters.