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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

hooky.

Absence from school or work; truancy.

5 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈhʊki/
  1. Absence from school or work; truancy.

    uncountable
    Let's play hooky and go to the mall.
Where this word comes from

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.

adj/ˈhʊki/
  1. 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.
  2. Shaped like or resembling a hook; hooked.

  3. Dodgy; crooked; illicit.

    UK · slang
Where this word comes from

Etymology tree English hook Proto-Indo-European *-kos Proto-Germanic *-gaz Proto-West Germanic *-g Old English -iġ Middle English -y English -y English hooky From hook + -y.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.