hooky

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈhʊki/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Homophones: hookey, hookie
• Rhymes: -ʊki

Etymology 1

Attested in 1848 in New York City. Most likely from Dutch hoekje (“nook, corner; 'spot to hide' in hide-and-seek”). Formerly, "hoekje spelen" could be used to mean "to play hide-and-seek", though the common term for the game nowadays is verstoppertje.

Noun

hooky (uncountable)

1. Absence from school or work; truancy. (Can we add an example for this sense?)

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:truancy

   Let's play hooky and go to the mall.

   • 2006, Noire [pseudonym], Thug-A-Licious: An Urban Erotic Tale, New York, N.Y.: One World, Ballantine Books, →ISBN, page 101:

     I was already two years late getting to college. I was twenty, not eighteen like most people who were about to graduate. All that hooky playing, stealing, and getting sent to juvenile jails had set me way back.

Derived terms

• hooky-playing
• play hooky

 

Etymology 2

From hook +‎ -y.

Adjective

hooky (comparative hookier, superlative hookiest)

1. Full of hooks (in any sense).

   Sew the hooky half of the Velcro on the inner side so that it doesn't pick up fluff.

   • 2020 November 9, Gwen Ihnat, “With McCartney III, Paul McCartney offers lessons from a legendary life”, in The A.V. Club:

     At least the mostly instrumental kickoff “Long Tailed Winter Bird” offers a hooky acoustic guitar riff you can’t blame McCartney for hanging on to as long as he does.

2. Shaped like or resembling a hook; hooked.
3. (UK, slang) Dodgy; crooked; illicit.
   • 2015, Marnie Riches, The Girl Who Wouldn't Die:

     Start a thing in the street and attract attention to bags full of hooky gear? No. She was smarter than that.

   • 2016, Alan Tootill, Cole and the Clairvoyant, page 45:

     So I decided to put on my seediest voice and leer, and go round offering the traders the Cole line in cheap hooky goods.

Anagrams

• hokyo