![]() with a new solution.īut Lighter also points out a number of other senses of hype that have emerged over the years: as a noun, a heroin or morphine addict (by 1924), a shortchange swindle or (any) con game (by 1925), a sudden steep but usually impermanent rise in retail price (by 1926), a misleading or exaggerated story (by 1938), and overblown publicity or advertising (by 1958) as an adjective, fraudulent (by 1978), and impressive or outstanding (by 1989) as a verb, to swindle or cheat (by 1914), to cajole or mislead (by 1938), (often as hype up) to inject via hypodermic needle (by 1938), (often as hype up) to make more exciting (by 1942), (often as hype up) to make more excited (by 1946), (often as hype up) to increase or inflate (by 1947), (in carnival cant) to charge more than the usual rate for merchandise (by 1950), and to promote aggressively (by 1959). Lighter, The Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang (1997) devotes the equivalent of two full-size dictionary pages to various forms of hype and hyper-and right out of the box it concedes that the meanings not directly related to the use of hypodermic needles "may reflect a different etymon."Īs early as 1910, Lighter reports, hype (or hyp) appears as a short form of "hypodermic (needle)":ġ910 Adventure (Nov.) 183: I turned to give another hyp. As a result, the source word for a particular sense of the term can be difficult to identify with any confidence. ![]() Hype has a long history of slang use in the United States, with various meanings emerging and disappearing or changing shape.
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