hocus and pocus

English

Noun

hocus and pocus (usually uncountable, plural hocuses and pocuses)

1. Alternative form of hocus-pocus
   • 1882, Golden Curl, and Other Fairy Stories, pages 100 and 102:

     “I’ve got an idea if we go up the mountain and pick some of the Hocus and Pocus plant which cures toothache instantly, we might give it to our little friends to take him, and the chances are he would be so pleased at having his pain cured that he would do anything for them.” […] and then Sapphire said that they must look carefully amongst the grass, for it was in that field that the Hocus and Pocus plant grew; and sure enough, they had hardly walked a quarter of the way across when Mince Pie and Barley Sugar called out that they had found a beautiful plant of it.

   • 1988 December 10, Walter J. Rittle, “Religion, Football”, in The Daily News, number 93, Lebanon, Pa., page 6, column 6:

     I guess Sunday night taught us that religions and footballs have their hocuses and pocuses, too.

   • 1994, Fanfare, page 454:

     Engineer Bill Maylone lists the microphones he used—Schoeps MK21, Neumann KM 140, and AKG C414—keeping alive the nearly forgotten custom of giving the listener an insight into one area of the recording art that is still immune from all the hocus and pocus of digitization.

Verb

hocus and pocus (third-person singular simple present hocuses and pocuses or hocusses and pocusses, present participle hocusing and pocusing or hocussing and pocussing, simple past and past participle hocused and pocused or hocussed and pocussed)

1. Alternative form of hocus-pocus
   • 1873, “Cinderella”, in Trade Truths and Fireside Fancies. Selected from the Miscellaneous Writings of Benjamin Andrade., London: […] W. H. & L. Collingridge, […] , page 122:

     Says she, “My dear Cindy, you shan’t at home stop / While they sport their toes at a twopenny hop; / You shall have coach and horses, and shut up the shop, / And wed perhaps to a very fine fellow.” / So she hocussed and pocussed the coach and the pair, / The footman, the coachman, and all else were there, / With a bran span new barber to curl up her hair— / A regular swell Cinderella.

   • 1938, Annals of Medical History, page 345, column 2:

     Thebaic tincture gtts. vi / Gum ammoniacum O / Sig: One scruple q 4 hours // The beautiful thing about that prescription was that it was harmless. Many wrote prescriptions like that only for show, just Hocusing and Pocusing.

   • 1966 August 7, Richard Haun, “Haunimals”, in Democrat and Chronicle, Rochester, N.Y., page 2M, column 5:

     Your attention is presently focused / On a grasshopping red-legged locust. / If threatened or chased, / He will vanish post haste, / Just as if he had hocused and pocused.

   • 1982 April 4, New York Times News Service, “East: Brewers may make it now”, in Sunday Herald-Leader, number 14, Lexington, Ky., section “Baltimore”, page D5, column 1:

     As the dean of the league’s managers, Earl Weaver also has acted as a magician at times, hocusing and pocusing the Orioles into races they really shouldn’t have been in. This season he may have to pull another trick.

   • 1986, Mary Stolz, Ivy Larkin, published 1989, →ISBN, page 19:

     Ivy yearned to be grown up. When you were a child, you did what they wanted. Willy-nilly. Helter-skelter. Pell and mell. You were hocussed and pocussed from one place to another with no say about it at all. You could have friends where you were, like the school you were going to, the apartment you lived in where you and your sister had a bedroom together and Francis one of his own. You could lose all that when they decided you would.

   • 1990, Salman Rushdie, “The Dull Lake”, in Haroun and the Sea of Stories, published 2000, →ISBN:

     A few moments later that malodorous mist tore apart like the shreds of an old shirt and drifted away on a cool night breeze. The moon shone down once more upon the waters of the Lake. / ‘You see,’ Haroun told his father, ‘it wasn’t only a story, after all.’ / Rashid actually laughed out loud in delight. ‘You’re a blinking good man in a tight spot, Haroun Khalifa,’ he said with an emphatic nod. ‘Hats off to you.’ / ‘Gullible Mr Rashid,’ cried Snooty Buttoo, ‘surely you don’t believe the lad’s hocusing and pocusing? Freak weather conditions came, and then went. No more to be said.’

   • 1998 February 14, “Center Place”, in Dave Nicholson, editor, The Tampa Tribune, page 21, column 2:

     A gray-haired witch with a memorable nose scampers across a darkened stage, hocusing and pocusing as a group of schoolchildren gasp and cuddle.

   • 2004, Jack Kerley, The Hundredth Man, Dutton, →ISBN:

     “Hocused and pocused,” Harry said. “Now try and focus.” / I rolled my eyes. “C’mon, Harry, try it in English.”

   • 2007 November 16, Peter Dobrin, “Orchestra sour in a magically sweet ‘Hänsel’”, in The Philadelphia Inquirer, number 169, page W28, column 3:

     The wigs and makeup by Tom Watson helped create a coarse and hairy witch, exactly the kind you want hocusing and pocusing around stage.

   • 2010, Gregory Pastoll, “The Astronomer Royal”, in The King of Kafooni ..and other stories in rhyming verse, AuthorHouse, →ISBN, page 1:

     He hocused and pocused, and locused and focused, / Did what he could to enlarge. / His telescope strained, and it loudly complained, / But it held on, like mad, to its charge.

   • 2016, Veronica Aldous, “Float”, in Mortal, →ISBN, page 23:

     I could go through walls and windows just to take a look / Other lives fizzing and jingling as I walk about in my old / Black coat / […] / Hocusing and pocusing in my outsider way / Invisible and interfering, stirring the dinner stew / Adding just a bit too much pepper.

   • 2019, Madoka Kotani, Buck Naked in Another World, volume 1, Seven Seas Entertainment, published 2020, →ISBN:

     Then it happened: the arrow turned in mid-air, its point aimed right at the wyvern’s face. It was like she said—I was in charge of the bow and arrows, she was in charge of hocusing and pocusing them on course. You could call us a sniper and his magical spotter.

   • 2021, Andrew A. Erish, “1875–1904”, in Vitagraph: America’s First Great Motion Picture Studio, University Press of Kentucky, →ISBN, page 19:

     The title of Smith’s first magic film is to the point: The Vanishing Lady (1898). Blackton operated the camera while Smith hocused and pocused one of their wives away. Presumably there were no trap doors through which a woman could disappear in the stages of the YMCAs and churches where Smith entertained, but thanks to moving pictures he was able to add this most basic of illusions to his repertoire.