hooky meaning: definition, etymology and quotations

hooky

noun

/ˈhʊki/

Etymology First attested in 1848 in New York City. Most likely from Dutch hoekje (“nook, corner; 'spot to hide' in hide-and-seek”). Formerly, "hoekje spelen" could be used to mean "to play hide-and-seek", though the common term for the game nowadays is verstoppertje. By surface analysis, hook + -y.

Absence from school or work; truancy.

Let's play hooky and go to the mall.
I was already two years late getting to college. I was twenty, not eighteen like most people who were about to graduate. All that hooky playing, stealing, and getting sent to juvenile jails had set me way back.2006, Noire [pseudonym], Thug-A-Licious: An Urban Erotic Tale, New York, N.Y.: One World, Ballantine Books, →ISBN, page 101:

Derived terms: hooky-playing, play hooky

hooky

adj

Etymology From hook + -y.

Full of hooks (in any sense).

Sew the hooky half of the Velcro on the inner side so that it doesn't pick up fluff.
At least the mostly instrumental kickoff “Long Tailed Winter Bird” offers a hooky acoustic guitar riff you can’t blame McCartney for hanging on to as long as he does.2020 November 9, Gwen Ihnat, “With McCartney III, Paul McCartney offers lessons from a legendary life”, in The A.V. Club:

Shaped like or resembling a hook; hooked.

UK, Slang Dodgy; crooked; illicit.

Start a thing in the street and attract attention to bags full of hooky gear? No. She was smarter than that.2015, Marnie Riches, The Girl Who Wouldn't Die:
So I decided to put on my seediest voice and leer, and go round offering the traders the Cole line in cheap hooky goods.2016, Alan Tootill, Cole and the Clairvoyant, page 45: