hook
/hʊk
/noun
1A piece of metal or other hard material curved or bent back at an angle, for catching hold of or hanging things on: a picture hook...
- My grandpa had the most impressive collection of picture hooks and picture hanging implements that I have ever seen.
- Earlier in the trial, a fire investigation officer told the court the fire spread rapidly through the flat as it took hold of clothing hanging on hooks behind a door where it started.
- There was a wonderful ice-cold larder with big hooks for hanging game.
Synonyms
peg, holder
fastener, fastening, catch, clasp, hasp, clip, pin, buckle, hook and eye;
Archaeology fibula
1.1 (also fish hook) A bent piece of metal, typically barbed and baited, for catching fish.The 46-year old captain was stabbed several times in the chest and head with a fish hook, the Star said....
- A guy came in here to buy a fish hook and you sold him a boat, a 4x4 truck and a tent?
- He took out a vicious-looking fish hook from behind his back.
Synonyms
fish hook, barb, snare, trap
2A thing designed to catch people’s attention: companies are looking for a sales hook...
- A good trailer is a hook, designed to leave you irresistibly compelled to come back one more time.
- They only added that feature a few months ago, and have suddenly decided that's their hook to get attention.
- The hook that caught him was the girl's attitude.
2.1A catchy chorus or repeated instrumental passage in a piece of popular music: strong, funky vocals with a hook that gets into your head...
- The foot-tapping Hamoa Beach, meanwhile, is simply a great listen, featuring some more tremendous hooks and another catchy chorus.
- He certainly is an amazing pop songwriter, dropping catchy hooks and tasteful riffs left and right.
- The label immediately seized upon their talent for blending edgy, high-pitched vocals with catchy guitar hooks, as epitomised by Float On.
3A curved cutting instrument, especially as used for reaping or shearing.He arranged two lines of men with flails, clubs, pitchforks, sickles, and reaping hooks....
- In summer for the wheat harvest, everybody was given a reaping hook to work in the fields.
- The gang attacked him in the doorway of the hotel where he was working, armed with slash hooks and hammers after hearing his English accent.
Synonyms
billhook, scythe, sickle
4A short swinging punch made with the elbow bent and rigid, especially in boxing: a perfectly timed right hook to the chin...
- By the end of the round Ellis is pinned against the ropes and Frazier is landing body shots and short hooks to the head.
- He had a good long hard jab, his left hook and left uppercut were devastating punches.
- Mike's favorite punch is the right hook and my favorite punch is his left hook, so we disagree in what his best shot is.
Synonyms
punch, blow, hit, box, cuff, thump, smack, crack, knock, thwack;
Scottish & Northern English skelp
informal belt, bop, biff, sock, clout, whack, wallop, plug, slug, whop
British informal slosh, dot
North American informal boff
Australian/New Zealand informal dong
4.1 Cricket A stroke made to the on side with a horizontal or slightly upward swing of the bat at shoulder height.First Flintoff continues his Botham impression with another hook for six, then guides one down to the vacant third-man boundary, and lastly lets fly square of the wicket....
- Runs started to flow as Jaques top-edged a hook at Harris for six and drove him for four through extra cover.
- He is strong off the back, utilising hooks and cuts to great effect.
4.2 Golf A stroke which makes the ball deviate in flight in the direction of the follow-through (from right to left for a right-handed player), typically inadvertently.Nobody has trouble putting sidespin on the ball - that's what produces hooks and slices....
- The wind heightens any spin on the ball, and accentuates a slice or a hook.
- Too often players subconsciously misalign their shoulders to compensate for their usual hook or slice.
5A curved stroke in handwriting.Kurtz notes, ‘The small hooks at the end of the "t" and the "i" indicate a writer who is tenacious, holds on to beliefs, doctrines, ideals.’...
- Place the pen on the paper, pull up then straight down, then make a small hook.
5.1 Music An added stroke transverse to the stem in the symbol for a quaver or other note.Any note shorter than a quarter note has one or more hooks to indicate its length.
6 [usually in place names] A curved promontory or sand spit.The United States owned the entire promontory of Sandy Hook.
verb
1 [with object and adverbial] Attach or fasten with a hook or hooks: the truck had a red lamp hooked to its tailgate she tried to hook up her bra [no object]: a ladder that hooks over the roof ridge...
- She had just finished hooking the last clasp when Loretta turned to her holding up a delicate silver chain and smiling triumphantly.
- Michelle carefully hooked the clasp and turned Dylan to face her.
- He fires a grappling hook that hooks itself onto the balustrade of the rooftop garden.
Synonyms
attach, fix, hitch, fasten, secure, clasp
archaic hasp, grapple
1.1Bend into the shape of a hook so as to fasten around or to an object: [with object]: he hooked his thumbs in his belt she hooked a thread around her crochet hook [no object]: her legs hooked around mine...
- Isabella hooked her arm through mine and dragged me in.
- I hooked his arm in mine and laid my head on his shoulder.
- He hooked his arm in mine and slowly led me to the dining room.
Synonyms
curl, bend, crook, loop, angle, curve
1.2 [with object] Rugby Secure (the ball) and pass it backwards with the foot in the scrum.This is done by hooking the ball with the soft swinging motion of one of the feet as the teams 8-man scrum pack pushes forward to give the hooker more room to hook the ball....
- At this point, the hookers both attempt to hook the ball back to their teammates.
- You can only hook the ball back with your feet.
2 [with object] Catch with a hook: he hooked a 24 lb pike...
- Proud of a nice catch, Myrtle McDonald hooked this fish in the Chapman River.
- I went for another half an hour before hooking my third rainbow making me the only angler to land three fish.
- Beware though: hooking the prize catch is one thing, securing it in your keepnet another.
Synonyms
catch, take, land, net, bag, snare, ensnare, trap, entrap
2.1 informal Attract and hold the attention of; captivate: I was hooked by John’s radical zeal...
- If they can capture our attention now, they have hooked us for future years and we are far more likely to buy from their site advertisers.
- One inconsequential little jamless doughnut sets in chain a ripple of growing anger that hooks the attention of our entire nation.
- What was it about that cheetah that hooked his attention so?
2.2 archaic, informal Steal: a maid hooked one of her mistress’s dresses
3 [with object] Cricket Hit (the ball) round to the on side with a horizontal or slightly upward swing of the bat at shoulder height; hit a ball delivered by (the bowler) with such a stroke.When he hooks a ball over square-leg it is with the cheek associated with schoolboys....
- In the same over that he brought up his fifty, he hooked the last ball to the square-leg boundary, where its sheer vigour caused Chris Adams to palm a fairly easy catch over the boundary for six.
- Undaunted, the admirable Michael Vaughan hooked a rare Glenn McGrath no-ball for six.
3.1 Golf Strike (the ball) so that it deviates in the direction of the follow-through, typically inadvertently.To draw or hook a golf ball, you must have fast hands....
- He shouldn't overdo it, though: The flatter the backswing, the easier it is to hook the ball.
- If you're slicing or hooking the ball, the divot hole can point the way to a cure.
3.2 [no object] Boxing Punch one’s opponent with the elbow bent and rigid: McKenzie switched his attack downstairs, hooking to the ribs...
- From round 3 on, it was all Shields as he would hook, and uppercut his way to victory.
4 (often in imperative hook it) British informal, dated Run away: kindly hook it—I just want you to scram...
- She began to, but I can't stand women when they cry, so I said she'd better hook it.
- After we had been on the bridge a bit, we got shooed off by a benevolent old retainer who said "Now you've had a nice look now!" and explained the boss would be down in a bit, so we'd better hook it. So we did.
- ‘When you gave me the shilling,’ cried Dan, ‘he followed me into the yard, and told me to hook it.’
5 [no object] (usually as noun hooking) informal (Of a woman) work as a prostitute.
Phrases
by hook or by crook
get one's hooks into
get (or give someone) the hook
hook, line, and sinker
off the hook
on the hook for
on one's own hook
sling one's hook
Phrasal verbs
hook up
Derivatives
hookless
- Otherwise all of us would be using hookless flies and not one angler in 10,000 does.
- The warm summer sun shone down on Abby as she cast her line into the bay, and settled into a gentle casting rhythm that drove fish wild to jump at her hookless fly.
- She was sober, and had quite forgotten the fish that were still occasionally tugging at her hookless fly.
hooklet
- Some of its long feathers had barbules and hooklets that bound together a feather's barbs and gave the feather greater strength, flexibility and surface area.
- Examine the amazing close-up of the barbules of a feather showing the tiny hooklets and grooves.
- The hooklets, which have been often mentioned, are quite elaborate, and they are in fact one of many kinds of projections.
hook-like
- He needed 19 stitches to the wound to his face, and had a deep cut to the back of the head which was caused by a screwdriver and a punctured muscle in his arm from a hook-like gardening tool.
- Clinging to his palm with hook-like feet was one of these bizarre little lizards, its eyes rotating independently.
- Hookworms are small parasitic worms, with hook-like appendages on their mouths, that feed off the wall of the small intestine and can cause severe damage.
Origin
Old English hōc, of Germanic origin; related to Dutch hoek 'corner, angle, projecting piece of land', also to German Haken 'hook'.
Hooks have many uses: for catching hold of things, for hanging things on, for controlling sheep, for carrying bait, and others. The angler's hook features in hook, line and sinker, used to emphasize that someone has been completely deceived or tricked. The items all form part of fishing tackle, where a sinker is a weight used to sink the fishing line in the water. The image behind the expression is of a hungry fish deceived by the bait into gulping everything down. The expression off the hook, ‘no longer in trouble or difficulty’, is almost the opposite: the idea here is of a fish managing to wriggle off the hook that lodged in its mouth when it took the bait.
The type of hook referred to in by hook or by crook, ‘by any possible means’, is not certain. The expression goes back to the 14th century and probably comes from farming, with the crook being a shepherd's hooked staff and the hook a ‘billhook’, a heavy curved pruning knife. How these implements might have been used together comes from the writer and political reformer William Cobbett, who in 1822 described an ancient English forest law. According to this, people living near woodland were allowed to gather dead tree branches for fuel, using the hook to cut them off or the crook to pull them down. To play hookey, or play truant, is a 19th-century US expression. It probably comes from hook off or hook it, meaning ‘to go away’.
Rhymes
- pertransient
- perturb
- perturbability
- perturbable
- perturbance
- perturbant
- perturbate
- perturbated
- perturbating
- perturbation
- perturbational
- perturbation-theoretic
- perturbation-theoretical
- perturbation theory
- perturbatious
- perturbative
- perturbative function
- perturbatively
- perturbator
- perturbatory
- perturbed
- perturbedly
- perturber
- perturbingly
- perturbment