hooking up

verb

present participle of hook up
as in traveling
to come or be together as friends former classmates who hooked up and started a business together

Synonyms & Similar Words

Relevance

Antonyms & Near Antonyms

Example Sentences

Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
Recent Examples of hooking up Leinart, the biggest star among them, was hanging out with Nick Lachey and hooking up with Paris Hilton. — Ryan Kartje, Los Angeles Times, 28 Sep. 2026 The passage about the group of hippies going out to the pueblo and giving the Native kids LSD and hooking up on the tribe’s sacred ground until they get run off is priceless. — Maggie McGowan, The New York Review of Books, 5 Sep. 2026 After that finale breakup comes another big plot moment for Samir — hooking up with Billie. — Nicole Fell, HollywoodReporter, 4 Sep. 2026 The mood is already ruined after you get busted hooking up in a bar's bathroom. — Sean Joseph Outkick, FOXNews.com, 5 Aug. 2026 Cohn lived a secret life, hooking up regularly with gay hustlers. — Kai Bird, New Yorker, 3 Aug. 2026 This is like the complete inverse of Tom Sandoval and Raquel hooking up at Coachella. — Marlow Stern, Variety, 30 July 2026 Striking a balance between mellowness and fun is an imperative for a cohort that’s drinking less, hooking up less, and staying in more. — Spencer Kornhaber, The Atlantic, 23 July 2026 As the arrows on the chart indicate, the red line (sellers) is hooking down and the green line (buyers) is hooking up. — Nishant Pant, CNBC, 7 July 2026
Recent Examples of Synonyms for hooking up
  1. traveling
  2. associating
  3. messing around
  4. connecting
  5. running
  6. mixing
  7. joining
  8. collaborating
Verb
  • Soon, crew who had been traveling on the plane stepped in to stabilize it, issuing a mayday call and seeking a place to land.
    — Arkansas Online, Arkansas Online, 2 Oct. 2026
  • Two people died and one remains missing after a medical transport helicopter traveling from Catalina Island to the mainland crashed into the Pacific on Wednesday; two others were rescued and stable.
    — Fedor Zarkhin, Los Angeles Times, 1 Oct. 2026
Definition of traveling
Verb
  • King’s reaction, and the way the media was reporting on the verdict, revealed an unseemly form of racial stereotyping, associating a particular moral or legal position with being Black.
    — Chris Roemer, Baltimore Sun, 19 Sep. 2026
  • The web now contains one more independent page associating that company with a particular problem, category or use case.
    — Mat Golubovic, Forbes.com, 2 Sep. 2026
Definition of associating
Verb
  • There will be no more messing around with draggy eye pencils or the emperor’s new eye shadows.
    — Elizabeth Siegel, Allure, 17 Sep. 2026
  • Both of France’s sons seem to appreciate imaginative play over messing around with action figures, something that makes perfect sense given France’s own love for the arts.
    — Marah Eakin, Vulture, 8 Sep. 2026
Definition of messing around
Verb
  • The Bernina Express is a famous red scenic train connecting Tirano in Italy to Saint Moritz along a UNESCO World Heritage Site route.
    — Luisa Zargani, Footwear News, 1 Oct. 2026
  • The prolific and acclaimed writer and activist used his liberal beliefs and his agrarian roots in Kentucky to craft novels, poems and essays connecting the natural world to humankind.
    — Bethanne Patrick, Los Angeles Times, 1 Oct. 2026
Definition of connecting
Verb
  • Two blocks of six films each, running roughly an hour apiece, will precede the awards and the jury announcement.
    — Naman Ramachandran, Variety, 3 Oct. 2026
  • Jadan Baugh, who had been receiving some early Heisman Trophy hype after running for 11 touchdowns over his first four games, carried 12 times for only 13 yards.
    — Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times, 3 Oct. 2026
Definition of running
Verb
  • The Morrison critique — that bottlenecks come from mixing prep, cook and clean activities in the same square foot — is pushing designers to treat the room as a cluster of task zones rather than one open space.
    — Lauren Jarvis-Gibson, Miami Herald, 1 Oct. 2026
  • Research has shown that mixing ketamine with other substances such as alcohol can be dangerous, potentially leading to problems including respiratory depression, where breathing becomes dangerously slow or shallow.
    — Violet Jira, Washington Post, 1 Oct. 2026
Definition of mixing
Verb
  • The rest of the 2026-27 Playhouse on Park season has not yet been announced but is being rethought due to Brätt’s joining the leadership team just a few months ago.
    — Christopher Arnott, Hartford Courant, 2 Oct. 2026
  • Prior to joining Nirvana Brands this year, Budge was a senior vice president and general manager at Morphe’s former parent company, Forma Brands, and before that served as CEO at Omorovicza Cosmetics.
    — Noor Lobad, Footwear News, 1 Oct. 2026
Definition of joining
Verb
  • Flea, and artist Charles Gaines who is collaborating with Black Nile and Devin Daniels.
    — Maximilíano Durón, ARTnews.com, 29 Sep. 2026
  • The two companies are also collaborating on a clinical trial to evaluate the use of two drugs – sonesitatug vedotin and ivonescimab – in combination to treat certain gastrointestinal cancers.
    — Chloe Taylor,Lee Ying Shan,Fred Imbert, CNBC, 28 Sep. 2026
Definition of collaborating

Browse Nearby Words

hooking
hooking up
hooking up (with)
See all Nearby Words

Cite this Entry

“Hooking up.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/hooking%20up. Accessed 4 Oct. 2026.

Copy Citation
Last Updated: - Updated example sentences
Love words? Need even more definitions?

Subscribe to America's largest dictionary and get thousands more definitions and advanced search—ad free!

Popular in Grammar & Usage

See More

Do You Need a New Language Peeve?

More Commonly Mispronounced Words

Merriam-Webster’s Great Big List of Words You Love to Hate

'A' or 'an'? What about before 'h'? An Indefinite Article Guide

Why is '-ed' sometimes pronounced at the end of a word?
See More

Popular in Wordplay

See More

7 Great Ways to Say 'Great'

The Longest Long Words List

9 Words That Sound Like Insults But Aren't

The Words of the Week - Oct. 2

12 Lovely and Unusual Words for the Natural World
See More

Popular

See More

Do You Need a New Language Peeve?

7 Great Ways to Say 'Great'

The Longest Long Words List
See More

Games & Quizzes

See All
Play Quordle: Guess all four words in a limited number of tries. Each of your guesses must be a real 5-letter word.
Quordle Can you solve 4 words at once?
Play Blossom: Solve today's spelling word game by finding as many words as you can using just 7 letters. Longer words score more points.
Blossom Pick the best words!
Play Missing Letter: a crossword with a twist. Each of the 25 puzzle words start with a different letter of the alphabet. Which letter is missing?
The Missing Letter A daily crossword with a twist
name tags
Words Named After People Quiz Find out who’s behind "leotard," "morphine," an...
See All