hoke

See also: hokë, hơke, and Hoke

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /hoʊk/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -əʊk

Etymology 1

From Middle English hoke, from Old English hōc.

Noun

hoke (plural hokes)

1. (obsolete) Alternative form of hook
   • 1530 January 27 (Gregorian calendar), W[illiam] T[yndale], transl., [The Pentateuch] (Tyndale Bible), Malborow [Marburg], Hesse: […] Hans Luft [actually Antwerp: Johan Hoochstraten], →OCLC, Exodus xxviij:[13–14], folio LI, recto:

     And thou ſhalt make hokes off golde and two cheynes off fine golde: lynkeworke and wrethed, and faſten the wrethed cheynes to the hokes.

Related terms

• hoked (adjective)

Etymology 2

From hokum.

Verb

hoke (third-person singular simple present hokes, present participle hoking, simple past and past participle hoked)

1. (slang) To ascribe a false or artificial quality to; to pretend falsely to have some quality or to be doing something, etc.
   • 1976 September, Saul Bellow, Humboldt’s Gift, New York, N.Y.: Avon Books, →ISBN, page 126:

     Sewell an anti-Semite? Nonsense. It suited Humboldt to hoke that up.

   • 1993, Reed Whittemore, Jack London: Six Literary Lives, page 70:

     He even checked the Thomas Cooke & Son travel people about how to get to the East End (here he was hoking a bit), learning that they were ready to advise him on how to journey to any point in the world except the East End. Then he hailed a cab and found (here he was hoking further) that the cab driver didn't know how to get there either.

   • 1999, David Lewis, 15: Humean Supervenience Debugged: Papers in Metaphysics and Epistemology, volume 2, page 228:

     If we define partitions of alternative cases by means of ingeniously hoked-up properties, we can get the principle to say almost anything we like.

   • 2008, Terry Penner, “12: The Forms and the Sciences in Socrates and Plato”, in Hugh H. Benson, editor, A Companion to Plato, page 179:

     If it be asked how we come to talk about them, the answer is: for purposes of rejecting these misbegotten creatures of sophistic imaginations, “hoked up” with such things as interest, strength, and the like, which do exist, although only outside of these combinations.

Derived terms

• hoke up
• hokey

Noun

hoke (plural hokes)

1. Something contrived or artificial.

Etymology 3

From the root of holk (“hollow cavity”). Compare Scots howk.

Verb

hoke (third-person singular simple present hokes, present participle hoking, simple past and past participle hoked)

1. (Ireland) To scrounge, to grub.
   • 1987, Seamus Heaney, Terminus: The Haw Lantern, published 2010, unnumbered page:

     When I hoked there, I would find / An acorn and a rusted bolt

   • 2000, John Kelly, The Little Hammer, unnumbered page:

     We met when I was hoking about in the rocks – just the sort of thing a virtual only child does to put in the day.

Anagrams

• okeh

Norwegian Nynorsk

Noun

hoke f (definite singular hoka, indefinite plural hoker or hokor, definite plural hokene or hokone)

1. (pre-1938) alternative form of hake