hustle
/ˈhʌsəl/
hustle verb: to push someone roughly; to crowd; to jostle.
Verb
hustle (third-person singular simple present hustles, present participle hustling, simple past and past participle hustled)
- To push someone roughly; to crowd; to jostle.
- There is an hour or two, after the passengers have embarked, which is disquieting and fussy.[…]Passengers wander restlessly about or hurry, with futile energy, from place to place. Pushing men hustle each other at the windows of the purser's office, under pretence of expecting letters or...1915, G[eorge] A. Birmingham [pseudonym; James Owen Hannay], chapter I, in Gossamer, New York, N.Y.: George H. Doran Company, →OCLC
- To rush or hurry.
- I'll have to hustle to get there on time.
- Men in dairy lunches were hustling to gulp down the food which cooks had hustled to fry1922, Sinclair Lewis, chapter 12, in Babbitt
- Synonyms:
- fly
- To bundle; to stow something quickly.
- There was a person called Nana who ruled the nursery. Sometimes she took no notice of the playthings lying about, and sometimes, for no reason whatever, she went swooping about like a great wind and hustled them away in cupboards.1922, Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit
- To con, swindle, or deceive, especially financially.
- The guy tried to hustle me into buying into a bogus real estate deal.
- Synonyms:
- defraud
- To play deliberately badly at a game or sport in an attempt to encourage players to challenge one.
- To obtain by illicit or forceful action.
- To sell sex; to work as a pimp.
- Synonyms:
- pimp
- To be a prostitute; to exchange use of one's body for sexual purposes for money.
- All my life, been hustling / And tonight is my appraisal / 'Cause I'm a hooker selling songs / And my pimp's a record label2018, Brendon Urie, Michael Angelakos, Sam Hollander, Morgan Kibby, Jake Sinclair, Dillon Francis, “Hey Look Ma, I Made It”, in Pray for the Wicked, performed by Panic! at the Disco
- Synonyms:
- sell one's body
- To serve (a clientele) as a prostitute.
- When I was in Morocco I wrote this play ("Playland Blues") about young kids who […] hustle old gay men and closet queens.1976 February 14, Tommi Avicolli, Miguel Pinero, “Miguel Pinero: Prisoner, Playwright, God”, in Gay Community News, volume 3, number 33, page 9
- To dance the hustle, a disco dance.
- To work.
- Synonyms:
- labor
- To put a lot of effort into one's work.
- Frazier and Gary worked for me for free -- for six months -- they didn't take any money from the house. They worked for tips. They both had other jobs, and they came in here and they hustled their ass.1977 August 27, Steve Savage, Susan "Suki" Eagan, “Everything You Wanted to Know About Suki, But Were Too Distracted In Chaps to Ask Her”, in Gay Community News, volume 5, number 8, page 9
Noun
hustle (countable and uncountable, plural hustles)
- A state of busy activity.
- A propensity to work hard and get things done; ability to hustle.
- 'It's just natural for the folks here to be indolent,' she said. 'They just haven't got any hustle in them.'1934, Agatha Christie, chapter 3, in Murder on the Orient Express, London: HarperCollins, published 2017, page 26
- A type of disco dance, commonly danced to the Van McCoy song The Hustle (1975).
- A scam or swindle.
- An activity, such as prostitution or reselling stolen items, that a prisoner uses to earn money in prison.
- An act of prostitution.
- Little Joe never once gave it away / Everybody had to pay and pay / A hustle here and a hustle there / New York City's the place1972, Lou Reed, “Walk on the Wild Side”
- An activity, especially to achieve a desired goal or make money.
- Everybody's got a hustle.
hustle meaning in Tamil, Marathi, Urdu and Telugu
hustle in Tamil
- தள்ளிச்செல், தள்ளு, நெருக்கு, பரபரப்பு, விரை
hustle in Marathi
- hustle
- घाई ghāī
hustle in Urdu
- hustle, bustle
- چپقلش capqulaś
hustle in Telugu
- హస్టిల్ చేయడానికి
More languagesFewer languages
- hustle in Malayalam
- തിക്കുക, തിക്കിത്തിരക്കി മുന്നേറുക
- hustle in Kannada
- ನೂಕುನುಗ್ಗಲು, ದೂಡು, ದಬ್ಬು, ಸೆಣಸು
- hustle in Nepali
- हस्टल, हस्टल गर्न
- hustle in Persian
- کلاشی کردن kallâši kardan
Examples of hustle in a sentence
- The other outfielders had no hustle, but fortunately the centerfielder carried them.
- He goes to the park to come away from the hustle and bustle of the city.
- He moved to his parents' farm to have a break from the hustle and bustle of the big city.
Synonyms of hustle
Forms of hustle
| Verb | |
|---|---|
| third-person singular present | hustles |
| present participle | hustling |
| past participle | hustled |
| past | hustled |
| Noun | |
| plural | hustles |
Origin of hustle
From Dutch husselen or by metathesis from Dutch hutselen (“to shake up”), a frequentative of hutsen (“to stir, to move something (back and forth)”).
Words formed from hustle
Phrases with hustle
Words that rhyme with hustle
Questions about hustle
- What does hustle mean?
- Hustle means to push someone roughly; to crowd; to jostle.
- What is hustle in Tamil?
- Hustle in Tamil is தள்ளிச்செல், தள்ளு, நெருக்கு. See Hustle meaning in Tamil.
- What part of speech is hustle?
- Hustle can be a verb or a noun.
- How do you pronounce hustle?
- Hustle is pronounced /ˈhʌsəl/.
- What is the past tense of hustle?
- The past tense of hustle is hustled.
Words near hustle in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: hustle (page history and authors); hustle (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); घाई (Marathi) (page history and authors); چپقلش (Urdu) (page history and authors); hustle (Telugu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); hustle (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); hustle (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); hustle (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-hustle.ogg.
Cite this entry: “hustle.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hustle. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.