▪ I. poky, a.1
(ˈpəʊkɪ)
Also pokey.
[f. poke v.1 + -y.]
1. a. Of a person, or his life or work: Pottering, peddling; taken up with petty matters or narrow interests: = poking ppl. a. 2.
| 1853 Lady Lyttelton Let. 20 Aug. in Corr. Sarah Spencer (1912) xvi. 413 All I want is to love more, and to smile more, and to be more amused and more merry, and less poky and morose and dry and grave! 1854 E. Twisleton Let. 29 June (1928) xi. 213 A dreadfully stiff and pokey set of people. 1856 Mrs. Stowe Dred iv, If religion is going to make me so poky, I shall put it off as long as I can. 1888 ‘R. Boldrewood’ Robbery under Arms iii, I laughed at myself for being so soft as to choose a hard-working pokey kind of life. Ibid. xlvii, The people..had lived a pokey life..for many a year. |
b. Of a place: Petty in size or accommodation; affording scanty room to stir; confined, mean, shabby: = poking ppl. a. 2.
| 1849 Alb. Smith Pottleton Leg. xx. 174 In a little poky cottage under the hill. 1860 J. Wolff Trav. & Adv. I. iv. 87 Sent to a poky lodging-house in High Holborn. 1876 F. E. Trollope Charming Fellow II. v. 74 It is monstrous to think of burying his talents in a poky little hole. 1894 Jessopp Random Roaming i. 18 Chichester seemed to me..a poky place. 1930 J. B. Priestley Angel Pavement v. 209 All this for less than it would cost to live in some dingy and dismal boarding-house or the pokiest of pokey flats. 1971 Daily Tel. 28 Sept. 2/5 A pokey, little, highly rented flat. |
c. Of dress, etc.: Shabby, dowdy.
| c 1854 Thackeray Wolves & Lamb i, Why do you dress yourself in this odd poky way? 1855 ― Newcomes lvii, The ladies were in their pokiest old head-gear and most dingy gowns. |
2. Cricket. Inclined to ‘poke’ when batting.
| 1888 A. G. Steel in Steel & Lyttelton Cricket iii. 142 To the pokey, nervous style of batsman it [sc. the high-dropping full-pitch] is fraught with considerable uneasiness. 1891 W. G. Grace Cricket 263 Against a poky batsman, on a sticky wicket, he has often as many opportunities as point of bringing off a smart catch. |
Hence ˈpokiness.
| 1886 Chicago Advance 14 Jan. 18 He detected the pokiness of the entire household this morning. |
▪ II. poky, a.2 and n. rare.
[f. poke n.2 + -y.]
In poky bonnet, also poky n. = poke-bonnet.
| 1861 Mrs. Browning Lett., to Isa Blagden (1897) II. 430 The nearest approach to a poky bonnet possible in this sinful generation. 1880 Daily News 2 July 5 A pleasing contrast to those oppressive times when inexorable custom compelled all to wear spoon-bills or pokeys or Leghorns. |