Skip to content
OneKitly

hip

nounverbnounadjectiveverbinterjectioncommon in dialogue

  • //hɪp//

The outward-projecting parts of the pelvis and top of the femur and the overlying tissue.

noun

  1. 1

    The outward-projecting parts of the pelvis and top of the femur and the overlying tissue.

  2. 2

    The inclined external angle formed by the intersection of two sloping roof planes.

  3. 3

    In a bridge truss, the place where an inclined end post meets the top chord.

    in all bridges preference will be given to designs having struts for hip verticals

  4. 4

    datedA drug addict, especially someone addicted to a narcotic like heroin.

    Ike explained to me that the Mexican government issued permits to hips allowing them a definite quantity of morphine per month at wholesale prices.

Etymology

From Middle English hipe, hupe, from Old English hype, from Proto-Germanic *hupiz (compare Dutch heup, Low German Huop, German Hüfte), from Proto-Indo-European *ḱewb- (compare Welsh cysgu (“to sleep”), Latin cubāre (“to lie”), Ancient Greek κύβος (kúbos, “hollow in the hips”), Albanian sup (“shoulder”), Sanskrit शुप्ति (śúpti, “shoulder”)), from *ḱew- (“to bend”). More at high. The sense "drug addict" derives from addicts lying on their hips while using certain drugs such as opium.

verb

  1. 1

    To use one's hips to bump into someone.

  2. 2

    To throw (one's adversary) over one's hip ("cross-buttock").

  3. 3

    To dislocate or sprain the hip of, to fracture or injure the hip bone of (a quadruped) in such a manner as to produce a permanent depression of that side.

  4. 4

    To make with a hip or hips, as a roof.

noun

  1. 1

    The fruit of a rose.

    1. BROTHER. […] What doo you gather there? OLD MAN. Hips and Hawes, and stickes and strawes, and thinges that I gather on the ground my sonne.

    The oaks bear mast, the briars scarlet hips; The bounteous housewife, Nature, on each bush Lays her full mess before you.

Etymology

From Middle English hepe, heppe, hipe, from Old English hēope, from Proto-Germanic *heupǭ (compare Dutch joop, German Hiefe, Faroese hjúpa), from Proto-Indo-European *ḱewb- (“briar, thorn”) (compare Old Prussian kaāubri (“thorn”), Lithuanian kaubrė̃ (“heap”)).

adjective

  1. 1

    datedAware, informed, up-to-date, trendy.

    I am also starting a folk-entourage school where you can go into gladitorial training to hang out in hip crowds with budding young folk stars.

    Everybody's saying that / Hell's the hippest way to go / Well, I don't think so / But I'm gonna take a look around it, though

    “Saturday Night” has an explicitly hip, cynical outlook, coupled with an impressive amount of freedom.

    One of the saints in my life is this woman named Imogene Hill, who was a fourth-grade teacher who taught this advanced class. She got hip to my whole situation in about a month and kindled a passion in me for learning things.

Etymology

Unknown or disputed. Probably a variant of hep; both forms are attested from the first decade of the 20th century. Some sources suggest derivation from Wolof hepi (“to see”) or hipi (“to open one’s eyes”). Others suggest connection to the noun, as opium smokers were said to lie on a hip. Neither of these suggestions is widely accepted, however.

verb

  1. 1

    slangTo inform, to make knowledgeable.

    No doubt, too, Sand must have hipped him quietly in a whisper somewhere what was happening with the lover

    She's a volunteer, hipped on civil rights, another do-gooder, evidently with a private pile since she takes no pay

    She went ape over Chris. She'd go downtown and come home with shopping bags loaded with fine dresses and underclothes for herself and her sisters. Later she hipped Chris to boosting

    A friend just hipped me to your rag and its ^([sic]) been a totally beautiful experience! Presently I'm imprisoned at the California Institute for Women and would like to receive my own issues of GCN.

interjection

  1. 1

    An exclamation to invoke a united cheer: hip hip hooray.

Forms

plural
hips
comparative
hipper
superlative
hippest
past tense
hipped
past participle
hipped
present participle
hipping
third person singular
hips
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).