Meaning
To be removed, dismissed or rejected abruptly, especially for performing badly; aimed at someone else it means to fire, eject or cut them off. Informal and American in flavour, it keeps a comic showbiz tinge and now reaches well beyond the theatre, to jobs, talent contests, sports teams and any public failure that ends in removal. Informal and jokey, with an American flavour; it implies public failure, so use with care about dismissals that are no laughing matter. Regional use: American English (theatrical origin).
Origin
The phrase belongs to American vaudeville and its amateur nights, where a failing act was said to be hauled off by a long pole with a hook. The standard story credits Charles Guthinger, property man for Tom Miner at Miner's Bowery Theatre in New York, with lashing a crook-handled cane to a pole in October 1903 to remove a tenor who refused to leave, after which a gallery boy supposedly shouted the words at the next act; a 1908 booklet copyrighted by H. Clay Miner printed the claim. Contemporary print evidence is thinner: the researcher Barry Popik traces the phrase in newspapers only from December 1905 (Boston Globe, New York Times), and a 1929 New York Times piece admitted it was unclear whether the hook began at Miner's, at White's Atheneum or somewhere else. Writers date the device variously to the 1880s, the 1890s or 1903, and the historian Anthony Slide called the hook 'probably more legend than reality'. The vaudeville setting is secure; the exact incident is folklore.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- face the hook
- give 'em the hook
- give someone the hook
Usage Examples
- The opening act got the hook after two flat songs and a mime routine nobody understood.
- If the sitcom's ratings do not improve, it will get the hook at midseason.
- Shareholders were ready to give the entire board the hook over the accounting scandal.