hoke

• IPA^(key): /hoʊk/
• Rhymes: -əʊk

From Middle English.

hoke (plural hokes)

1. (obsolete) Alternative form of hook
   • 1535, William Tyndale, Myles Coverdale (translators), The ii boke of Moses [Exodus] 28, The Holy Scriptures, unnumbered page,

     Thou shalt make hokes of golde also, and two wrethē cheynes of pure golde, and shalt fasten them vnto the hokes.

• hoked (adjective)

From hokum.

hoke (third-person singular simple present hokes, present participle hoking, simple past and past participle hoked)

1. (slang) To ascribe a false or artificial quality to; to pretend falsely to have some quality or to be doing something, etc.
   • 1993, Reed Whittemore, Jack London, Six Literary Lives, page 70,

     He even checked the Thomas Cooke & Son travel people about how to get to the East End (here he was hoking a bit), learning that they were ready to advise him on how to journey to any point in the world except the East End. Then he hailed a cab and found (here he was hoking further) that the cab driver didn't know how to get there either.

   • 1999, David Lewis, 15: Humean Supervenience Debugged, Papers in Metaphysics and Epistemology, Volume 2, page 228,

     If we define partitions of alternative cases by means of ingeniously hoked-up properties, we can get the principle to say almost anything we like.

   • 2008, Terry Penner, 12: The Forms and the Sciences in Socrates and Plato, Hugh H. Benson (editor), A Companion to Plato, page 179,

     If it be asked how we come to talk about them, the answer is: for purposes of rejecting these misbegotten creatures of sophistic imaginations, “hoked up” with such things as interest, strength, and the like, which do exist, although only outside of these combinations.

• hokey

hoke (plural hokes)

1. Something contrived or artificial.

Compare Scots howk.

hoke (third-person singular simple present hokes, present participle hoking, simple past and past participle hoked)

1. (Ireland) To scrounge, to grub.
   • 1987, Seamus Heaney, Terminus, The Haw Lantern, 2010, unnumbered page,

     When I hoked there, I would find / An acorn and a rusted bolt

   • 2000, John Kelly, The Little Hammer, unnumbered page,

     We met when I was hoking about in the rocks – just the sort of thing a virtual only child does to put in the day.

• okeh