▪ I. hickey, n. Chiefly U.S.
(ˈhɪkɪ)
Also hickie.
[Origin unknown.]
1. Any small gadget or device; something of little consequence; = doohickey.
Quot. 1909 is more specific than is warranted by the available evidence.
| 1909 Webster, Hickey (a), a device for bending a conduit, consisting of an iron pipe used as a handle fitted at one end with a tee through which the conduit is passed; (b) a small fitting used in wiring for electric lights, a fixture piped for gas. 1913 in Wentworth Amer. Dial. Dict. 291/1 S.C. Rock Hill. Common. ‘Hand me that hickey.’ 1928 Papers Michigan Acad. Sci. Arts & Lett. X. 298 Hickie, a word applicable to anything whose name one does not remember; ‘what's its name’. 1932 Atlantic Monthly CXLIX. 665 We have little hickeys beside our seats to regulate the amount of air admitted through a slot in each window. 1935 Hearst's International Oct. 24/2 The chances are the management will be putting hickeys in their keyholes. 1940 Sat. Even. Post 15 June 38/2 There was a violent distaste for the fraction-of-a-cent tokens, disks of aluminum with a hole in the center. These were variously called ‘Chinese money’, ‘hickeys’, ‘monkey money’ and ‘agony money’. |
2. A pimple; a love-bite. U.S. dial. or colloq.
Said by Wentworth and Flexner to be c 1915 but printed evidence is lacking.
| 1934 Amer. Ballads & Folk Songs (1960) 19 Godamighty made a 'gator wid hickies all over his Tail. 1937 Ten-Story Love Mag. May 2 (Advt.), Hickies spoil everything. I know. I had 'em until I began eating Fleischmann's yeast. 1946 Publ. Amer. Dial Soc. Nov. 17 Hickey, a small festered spot on the skin of a person. Salem. Reported 1942. 1956 H. Gold Man who was not with It (1965) xviii. 158 A woman is not just soul and hickie-squeezing. Ibid. xxv. 235 Tall..skinny, big blue hickie on the face. |
3. Printing. (See quots.)
| 1940 Correct English (Chicago) Mar. 63/3 Hickey, printer's slang term for ornament. 1961 H. B. Jacobson Mass Communications Dict. 163 Hickey. 1. Slang term for slight tears or rips in wet collodion or stripfilm negatives, or for small ‘runs’ or blemishes in sensitized coatings. 2. A speck on the printing area of an engraving that remains after the etch. Must be routed off. 1967 E. Chambers Photolitho-Offset 273 Hickeys, faults in the printed result which show as irregular spots with white surrounding haloes, caused by dirt or hardened specks of ink. |
4. See jim-hickey.
▪ II. hickey, a. slang.
(ˈhɪkɪ)
[? f. hick v.]
Tipsy.
Recorded in dictionaries of slang: Grose (1788), Matsell (1859), Barrère & Leland (1889), Berrey & Van den Bark (1942), etc.