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hooker

nounnounnounnouncommon in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//ˈhɵkə//
  • United Kingdom/[ˈhɵkə] ~ [ˈhɘkə]/
  • United States//ˈhʊkɚ//
  • Australia//ˈhʊkə//
  • Australia/[ˈhʊkə]/

One who, or that which, hooks.

noun

  1. 1

    One who, or that which, hooks.

  2. 2

    A player who hooks the ball out of the scrum with his foot.

    Hooker Dylan Hartley was sent to the sin-bin after yet another infringement at the breakdown and, on the stroke of half-time, Georgia's territorial advantage finally told when number eight Basilaia surged over from the base of the scrum for a try next to the posts.

  3. 3

    A batsman or batswoman adept at or fond of playing hook shots.

    I once saw Hassett drop England opening batsman and compulsive hooker, Cyril Washbrook, twice in succession at deep fine leg.

  4. 4

    A crocheter.

  5. 5

    datedSynonym of hook (“attention-grabbing element of a creative work”).

    We regard the first seven seconds of a television commercial as the most critical or crucial in the whole unit — the "Do or Die Seven" — the "moment of decision" or the "hooker", if you will, when we must capture the attention of the viewer, get him involved in the action, […]

  6. 6

    archaicA thief who uses a pole with a hook on the end to steal goods.

    They are sure to be clyd in the night by the angler, or hooker, or such like pilferers that liue upon the spoyle of other poore people.

    Suffer none, from far or near, / With their rights to interfere; / No strange Abram, Ruffler crack— / Hooker of another pack—

Etymology

Etymology tree English hook Proto-Indo-European *-yósder. Proto-Italic *-āzios Latin -āriusnom. Latin -āriusbor. Proto-Germanic *-ārijaz Proto-West Germanic *-ārī Old English -ere Middle English -ere English -er English hooker From hook (verb) + -er.

noun

  1. 1

    slangA prostitute.

    All my life, been hustling / And tonight is my appraisal / 'Cause I'm a hooker selling songs / And my pimp's a record label

  2. 2

    datedAn imprecise measure of alcoholic drink; a "slug" (of gin), or an overlarge gulp.

    Emily had cut short these 3 A.M. glooms with a hooker of bourbon.

Etymology

Unknown. The "prostitute" sense is the subject of a folk etymology connecting it to General Hooker of the American Civil War, but the earliest known use dates to 1835, decades before the war. Less implausibly, it has also been connected to a coastal feature called a hook (“A spit or narrow cape of sand or gravel turned landward at the outer end, such as Sandy Hook in New Jersey, Red Hook in New York”) in the ports of New York and Baltimore. Carefully learned inference is not conclusive. See this essay, pp 105ff.

noun

  1. 1

    Variant of hookahAlternative spelling of hookah.

noun

  1. 1

    A small fishing boat.

    In England there are Brighton Beach boats, Centre-board sloops, Pollywogs, Lough Erne yachts, Unas, New Brighton sailing-boats, yachts of the Norfolk Broads, Itchen, Clyde sailing and Keystone boats, Penzance luggers, Cobbles, Galways, Hookers and Pookhauns […]

  2. 2

    slangAny antiquated craft.

    [T]he poor Flash is gone, and there is an end of it. Poor old hooker. Hey, Almayer? You made a voyage or two with me. Wasn’t she a sweet craft?

    […] for there was scarce one of us that thought the old hooker would weather so long and hard a blow. We were mighty fortunate to come through it so handily.

Etymology

From Dutch hoeker, an alteration of Middle Dutch hoecboot, from hoec + boot.

Forms

plural
hookers
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).