hook
pronunciation
How to pronounce hook in British English:
UK [hʊk]
How to pronounce hook in American English:
US [hʊk]
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- Noun:
- a catch for locking a door
- a sharp curve or crook; a shape resembling a hook
- anything that serves as an enticement
- a mechanical device that is curved or bent to suspend or hold or pull something
- a curved or bent implement for suspending or pulling something
- a golf shot that curves to the left for a right-handed golfer
- a short swinging punch delivered from the side with the elbow bent
- a basketball shot made over the head with the hand that is farther from the basket
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- Verb:
- fasten with a hook
- rip off; ask an unreasonable price
- make a piece of needlework by interlocking and looping thread with a hooked needle
- hit a ball and put a spin on it so that it travels to the left
- take by theft
- make off with belongings of others
- hit with a hook
- catch with a hook
- to cause (someone or oneself) to become dependent (on something, especially a narcotic drug)
- secure with the foot
- entice and trap
- approach with an offer of sexual favors
Word Origin
- hook
- hook: [OE] Hook and its Germanic relatives, German haken, Dutch haak, Swedish hake, and Danish hage, go back to a prehistoric *keg- or *keng- ‘bent object’, from which English also gets hank [14] (via Old Norse *hanku). Old Norse haki ‘hook’ was the source of a now obsolete English hake ‘hook’, which may have been the inspiration for the fish-name hake [15] (the hake having a hook-shaped lower jaw). Hookah ‘water-pipe’ [18], incidentally, has no etymological connection with hook; it comes via Urdu from Arabic huqqah ‘small box’.=> hake, hank
- hook (n.)
- Old English hoc "hook, angle," perhaps related to Old English haca "bolt," from Proto-Germanic *hokaz/*hakan (cognates: Old Frisian hok, Middle Dutch hoek, Dutch haak, German Haken "hook"), from PIE *keg- "hook, tooth" (cognates: Russian kogot "claw"). For spelling, see hood (n.1). Boxing sense of "short, swinging blow with the elbow bent" is from 1898. Figurative sense was in Middle English (see hooker). By hook or by crook (late 14c.) probably alludes to tools of professional thieves. Hook, line, and sinker "completely" is 1838, a metaphor from angling.
- hook (v.)
- "to bend like a hook," c. 1200; see hook (n.). Meaning "to catch (a fish) with a hook" is from c. 1300. Related: Hooked; hooking.
Example
- 1. She grabs it off the hook and huddles behind it .
- 2. The area is now red hook park in brooklyn .
- 3. The hook on the bathroom door is falling off , he remembers .
- 4. I fail to understand that some men want both ; they want to get married and they even want to live like a bachelor with all hook ups and freedom .
- 5. So when mam took his side against laura I couldn 't drop marc with a right hook to the jaw or a knee in the family jewels , though I really , really wanted to , so I just went and sat on the front step and listened to them row .