hookey
(ˈhʊkɪ)
Also hooky.
[Cf. hook n. 14, v. 6, v. 13, and hooky-crooky.]
1. to play hookey: to play truant. Also transf. colloq. (chiefly N. Amer.).
| 1848 in Bartlett Dict. Amer. 1866 Harper's Mag. May 779/1 Kate used to..entreat him not to get feruled, nor play ‘hookey’. 1867 ‘Mark Twain’ Amer. Drolleries 20 He would not play hookey, even when his sober judgment told him it was the most profitable thing he could do. 1883 E. Eggleston Hoosier School-Boy ix. 47 They remembered that the geography lesson was a hard one, and so they played ‘hookey’. 1904 W. N. Harben Georgians vii. 77 ‘I sorter feel like playin' hookey myself,’ he admitted. 1908 C. E. Mulford Orphan xii. 150 I'll play on them, too, when they gets home! Off playing hookey from work when we all of us aches from double shifts. 1923 Wodehouse Inimitable Jeeves xiv. 172 He's played hookey from the choir so often that the vicar told him..he would fire him out. 1957 W. H. Whyte Organization Man iii. xi. 144 Such solitary contemplation during the office day..is regarded..as a form of hooky. 1960 I. Wallach Absence of Cello (1961) 98 ‘I like to play hooky now and then.’.. ‘You can't just call it hooky.’ 1965 Globe & Mail (Toronto) 22 Apr. 23/8 Youngsters who play hooky are..merely afraid of their classrooms. |
2. blind hookey: see blind a. 16. Also fig. or transf.
| 1852 G. C. Mundy Our Antipodes III. iii. 85 The process of emigration was formerly—as compared with its present gradual perfection—a very blind-hookey kind of game. 1909 J. R. Ware Passing Eng. 34/1 Blind Hookey, a leap in the dark; e.g., ‘Oh, it's Blind Hookey to attempt it.’ 1925 Blackw. Mag. Aug. 286/2 It is..the common practice of politicians to play blind hookey with the great interests entrusted to them. |