hip

Pluralhips

Formshipper, hippest

Formships, hipping, hipped

1. 1
   nouncountable

   The bony region where the pelvis and the top of the thigh bone meet, along with the surrounding flesh.

   The dancer swiveled her hip to the rhythm of the drums.

   Years of running left a dull ache in his right hip.

   Note

   The body part behind most of the word's other uses, from Old English hype. Its distant relatives include Latin cubāre, "to lie", and Ancient Greek kúbos, "hollow in the hips". Anatomically it covers bone and flesh together, so a person can break a hip or sway one. The rose fruit is a separate word, Old English hēope. It only happens to sound the same.

2. 2
   adjectiveslang

   Aware of and following the latest trends, fashions, or ideas.

   The new café draws a hip crowd of artists and designers.

   He prides himself on staying hip to the city's music scene.

   Similartrendy, cool, fashionable, stylish

   Oppositeunfashionable, uncool, square, dated

   Note

   Slang that dates from the early twentieth century, when it appeared alongside its probable twin hep. One proposed source is Wolof hepi, "to see". The adjective works two ways. Before a noun it marks the fashionable, as in Phil Ochs's "hip crowds". With to it marks what someone knows: Steve Jobs's teacher "got hip to my whole situation." It also compares freely, as in Joni Mitchell's "the hippest way to go."

3. 3
   interjection

   A call used to prompt a group to cheer together, as in "hip hip hooray."

   The team captain led three rounds of "Hip, hip, hooray!" after the win.

   The children cried "hip hip hooray" when the birthday boy opened his gift.

4. 4
   nouncountable

   The fleshy, berry-like fruit that develops on a rose once its flowers have been pollinated.

   A ripe hip turns deep orange-red and softens after the first frost.

   Foragers gather the tart hips to brew into syrup and tea.

   Similarrosehip

   Note

   The hedgerow word, from a root meaning "briar, thorn". Older English paired it with haws, the hawthorn's fruit. In George Peele's The Old Wives' Tale (c. 1590), an old man gathers "Hips and Hawes", and Shakespeare's Timon of Athens gives the briars "scarlet hips". Rosehip spells the meaning out whenever hip alone could be read as the body part.

5. 5
   nouncountable

   The sloping external angle where two adjacent pitched roof surfaces meet along their outer edge.

   The roofers sealed the hip before the first winter storm.

   Each hip slopes from the ridge down to a corner of the building.

   Oppositevalley

6. 6
   verbslangtransitive

   To give someone information about something, making them knowledgeable about or aware of it.

   Let me hip you to the rules before the game starts.

   She hipped the new recruits to how things really worked.

   Similarinform, brief

   Note

   This verb shares its origin with the "in the know" adjective and keeps that word's preposition: you hip someone to something. In Iceberg Slim's Pimp (1969), a woman "hipped Chris to boosting." The person told is the object, and the thing learned follows to. Jack Kerouac uses it for a whispered tip in The Subterraneans (1958). It belongs in casual speech.

7. 7
   verbtransitive

   To bump or shove someone using one's hip.

   Skaters sometimes hip each other to break free along the boards.

   The defender hipped the forward off the puck.

   Similarbump, check, shove, barge

   Note

   A body-contact verb from sports, where the hip is the striking surface. The verb takes the person struck as its object. A phrase often follows to say where they end up: off the puck, into the boards. This differs from the wrestler's throw. Here the opponent is moved aside, not lifted over.

8. 8
   verbtransitive

   To throw an opponent over one's hip, as in the wrestling move known as the cross-buttock.

   A good grappler can hip a larger foe using leverage rather than strength.

   With one smooth motion he hipped his challenger to the ground.

   Similarthrow

   Note

   Here the hip acts as a fulcrum rather than a battering surface. The thrower turns in, loads the opponent across the hip, and levers them over and down. That is why the move rewards leverage more than size. The older name, cross-buttock, describes the same throw by the part of the body the opponent is carried across.

9. 9
   verbtransitive

   To build a roof so that its ends slope inward and meet the side planes along external angles.

   The architect chose to hip the roof rather than add gable ends.

   They hipped the cottage roof to help it withstand strong winds.

   Note

   The builder's verb formed from the sloping roof angle. To hip a roof is to give its ends sloping faces that meet the sides along those angles, instead of finishing them with upright gables. The consonant doubles in every inflected form: hipping, hipped, as in a hipped roof.

10. 10
    nouncountable

    The joint in a bridge truss where the sloping end post meets the top chord.

    Inspectors found stress fractures at the hip of the span.

    The load concentrates at the hip, where the end post angles up to the top chord.

    Note

    An engineer's term from truss design. It also works as a modifier for the members that meet at that joint. John Alexander Low Waddell's General Specifications for Highway Bridges (1887) prefers designs "having struts for hip verticals". Read it as a point on the frame, not a sloping surface. That point is the main difference from the roofing hip.

11. 11
    verbtransitive

    To dislocate, sprain, or fracture the hip of a four-legged animal so severely that one side remains permanently sunken.

    A bad fall can hip a young colt for life.

    The ox had been hipped years earlier and walked with a lasting tilt.

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