This Sunday morning, I am committed neither to the church which I have been serving for the last nine months nor to my own congregation, to which I will return next Sunday. In describing this sublime estate in a note to a friend, I used the phrase "playing hookie" to which MicroSoft's spell checker objected, insisting that what is being played is "hooky." Could be.

Some words are, I think, mostly oral and some mostly written. Hooky is, it seems to me, what you say more than what you write.

I know exactly what I mean by it, but what does it mean?

From the Online Etymology Dictionary:

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=hooky

1848, Amer.Eng. (New York City), from Du. hoekje "hide and seek," or from hook it, 14c., "make off, run away," originally "depart, proceed."



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If it entered the language from the Dutch, it seems logical that it would have done so in New York City or "Nieuw Amsterdam".

ALso it seems as though the "hooky" spelling is the correct one (it's how I see it in my head) rather than Microsoft's "hookie". Makaes sense when you compare it to the Dutch spelling.

Oops - got that reversed. Sorry.

Eliza writes: "got that reversed."

As a long-time judge, I've grown accustomed to being occasionally reversed.

I don’t buy that ‘Dutch New York’ etymology – if it was that precise, the sources should be available to confirm it unequivocally and since they don’t seem to be, it smacks of folk etymology.

fwiw, the Word Detective column also expresses another view:

"Hookey" (also spelled "hooky") apparently developed from the colloquial phrase "hooky-crooky" common in the early 19th century, which meant "dishonest or underhanded."

http://www.word-detective.com/070599.html#hookie

Come to that, so does Merriam Webster support the other option:

Main Entry: hooky
Variant(s): or hook•ey /'hu-kE/
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural hook•ies or hookeys
Etymology: probably from slang hook, hook it (to make off)


and then there is the card-game Blind Hookey... were some kids bunking off school to gamble long ago...?

http://49.1911encyclopedia.org/B/BL/BLIND_HOOKEY.htm

Dave Wilton, at wordorigins, dismisses the 'hook it' etymology on the basis of 'playing hooky' being an Americanism and the 'hook it' phrase not being attested in America till after the origin of 'playing hooky.'

http://www.wordorigins.org/wordorh.htm#Hooky

Mebbe he has more information than posted there, but I don't see anything but bland assertions.

> probably derives

Why not more certain then?

> around the late 1840s

Why not more clear cut? - Dave normally tells you if it was a Tuesday or a Thursday!

> The derivation is obviously one of skipping school to play games.

If a mere assertion made a fact, so be it.

Bring it up at w/o, mav. I'm sure you'll get all the support there is available. He doesn't usually overload items on the Big List with a lot of detail.

True. OK.