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by hook or by crook

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English

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WOTD – 16 August 2024

Etymology

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Origin unknown.[1] One suggestion is that the term is derived from the common of estovers, an ancient right in English law for tenants of land to gather dead wood on common land using blunt tools such as hooks and shepherd’s crooks.[2][3]

Pronunciation

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Prepositional phrase

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by hook or by crook

  1. (idiomatic) By any means possible; one way or another. [from 14th c.]
    Synonyms: at all costs, by any means, by fair means or foul, no matter what, whatever it takes, (obsolete) with hook or crook
    She was determined to win the contract by hook or by crook.
    • 1521–1522, John Skelton, “Here after Followeth a Litel Boke Called Colyn Cloute, […]”, in Alexander Dyce, editor, The Poetical Works of John Skelton: […], volume I, London: Thomas Rodd, […], published 1843, →OCLC, page 359, lines 1239–1241:
      Nor wyll suffre this boke / By hoke ne by croke / Prynted for to be, […]
    • 1621, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], “Loue of Learning, or Overmuch Study. With a Digression of the Misery of Schollers, and Why the Muses are Melancholy.”, in The Anatomy of Melancholy, […], Oxford, Oxfordshire: […] John Lichfield and Iames Short, for Henry Cripps, →OCLC, partition 1, section 2, member 3, subsection 15, page 179:
      Some out of that inſatiable deſire of filthy lucre, to enrich themſelues, care not hovv they come by it, per fas & nefas [by right and wrong], hooke or crooke, ſo they haue it.
    • 1776 (first performance), Samuel Foote, “A Trip to Calais”, in [George] Colman, editor, A Trip to Calais; a Comedy […] To which is Annexed, The Capuchin; […] Altered from the Trip to Calais, […], London: […] T. Sherlock, for T[homas] Cadell, […], published 1778, →OCLC, Act II, scene [i], page 35:
      Novv if you could put us in a vvay, by hook or by crook, to get her out of the convent—
    • 1794 October 26 (date written), George Washington, “Washington to [Alexander] Hamilton”, in John C[hurch] Hamilton, editor, The Works of Alexander Hamilton; Comprising His Correspondence, and His Political and Official Writings, […], volume V, New York, N.Y.: John F[owler] Trow, […], published 1851, →OCLC, page 45:
      P.S. I hope you will be enabled by hook or by crook, to send B—— and H——, together with a certain Mr. Guthrie, to Philadelphia, for their winter quarters.
    • 1820 March 5, Geoffrey Crayon [pseudonym; Washington Irving], “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”, in The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., number VI, New York, N.Y.: […] C[ornelius] S. Van Winkle, […], →OCLC, pages 62–63:
      Thus, by diverse little make shifts, in that ingenious way which is commonly denominated "by hook and by crook," the worthy pedagogue got on tolerably enough, and was thought, by all those who undersood nothing of the labour of headwork, to have a wonderful easy life of it.
    • 1833, [Frederick Marryat], chapter XXVII, in Peter Simple. […], volume III, London: Saunders and Otley, […], published 1834, →OCLC, page 373:
      Since we've looked up a little in the world, I saved up five guineas, by hook or by crook, and tried to get Poll back again, but the lady said she wouldn't take fifty guineas for him.
    • 1842 March (date written), George Eliot [pseudonym; Mary Ann Evans], “[March 1841 to April 1846: Coventry—Translation of [David] Strauss]”, in J[ohn] W[alter] Cross, editor, George Eliot’s Life as Related in Her Letters and Journals […], volume I, Edinburgh; London: William Blackwood and Sons, published 1885, →OCLC, page 112:
      Can you not drive over and see me? Do come by hook or by crook.
    • 1852 March – 1853 September, Charles Dickens, “Closing In”, in Bleak House, London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1853, →OCLC, page 469:
      In these fields of Mr. Tulkinghorn's inhabiting, where the shepherds play on Chancery pipes that have no stop, and keep their sheep in the fold by hook and by crook until they have shorn them exceeding close, every noise is merged, this moonlight night, into a distant ringing hum, as if the city were a vast glass, vibrating.
    • 1872 September – 1873 July, Thomas Hardy, “‘’Twas on the Evening of a Winter’s Day’”, in A Pair of Blue Eyes. […], volume I, London: Tinsley Brothers, […], published 1873, →OCLC, pages 15–16:
      And, by hook or by crook, Hedger Luxellian was made a lord, and everything went on well till some time after, when he got into a most terrible row with King Charles the Fourth— […]
    • 1899 February, Joseph Conrad, “The Heart of Darkness”, in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, volume CLXV, number M, New York, N.Y.: The Leonard Scott Publishing Company, […], →OCLC, part I, page 198, column 1:
      I wouldn't have believed it of myself; but, then—you see—I felt somehow I must get there by hook or by crook.
    • 1936 August, Ernest Hemingway, “The Snows of Kilimanjaro”, in The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, published 14 October 1938, →OCLC, page 158:
      He had destroyed his talent by not using it, by betrayals of himself and what he believed in, by drinking so much that he blunted the edge of his perceptions, by laziness, by sloth, and by snobbery, by pride and by prejudice, by hook and by crook.

Alternative forms

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Translations

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See also

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References

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  1. ^ “by hook or (also and) by crook, phrase” under “hook, n.1”, in OED Online  ⁠, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, March 2024; “by hook or by crook, phrase”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
  2. ^ See, for example, Michael Allaby, editor (1985), “estovers”, in The Oxford Dictionary of Natural History, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 235, column 1: “Dead standing wood and branches can be obtained ‘by hook or by crook’, i.e. by use of a blunt tool.”
  3. ^ Susan Marks (2019) “Trees and Liberty”, in A False Tree of Liberty: Human Rights in Radical Thought, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 222:
    Under forest law, commoners had the right to take both dead wood lying on the ground (‘lops and tops’) and ‘snapwood’, by which was meant whatever could be snapped off a tree by hand or pulled down with a hook fixed to the end of a pole (‘by hook or by crook’). This was the ‘common of estovers’, and it was fiercely defended when enclosure turned custom into crime.

Further reading

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