hoekje?
Dave, can you fill in any more detail on the derivation you suggest for playing hooky on the Big List? I have been wondering why so many other sources point to other likely origins, such as tracing...
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We have two competing schools of thought based around two different reference works.The OED2 plumps for the "hooky-crooky" explanation. I would imagine that most of the sources that cite this...
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Thanks Dave.It just seemed a bit counterintuitive to me to be looking at a specific loanword derivation unless there was really solid attestation. After all, in addition to the hooky-crooky usage and...
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If Hooky in this sense came from dutch in the New York area, how long might it have taken to travel south?There is a reference to "playing hooky" in Huckleberry Finn, and Mark Twain tried hard to use...
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In general terms, the sense would seem to stick with the original Dutch word if that is indeed the origin.Hoekje means corner.I can just see some wee kid furtively sneaking off just before the bell...
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What also pleads for it is the fact that the average kid in the street would say "hoekie", so sounding exactly the same as 'hooky' (there are regional and class related differences though). I can...
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The 1970 speculative etymology is plausible IMHO but other speculations can be advanced also. For example there is now a game called "hookey" which is (I think) something like darts, involving...
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Mr. Wilson refers to the "game of hookey" and raises the question of its age etc. This excerpt from an 1855 work may shed a little light:Daniel William Cahill, First American ed. of the works of the...
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"blind hookey" is also mentioned in Dickens "Hard Times" (1854):"The better class of minds, however, did not need to be informed that the Powlers were an ancient stock, who could trace themselves so...
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