Meaning
Stay away from school or another obligation without permission. Current informal expression Regional use: United States, later North American English.
Origin
American schoolchildren's slang in print by 1842 and defined in Bartlett's 1848 Dictionary of Americanisms. Its exact origin is not certain. A proposed path from Dutch hoeckje, a hide-and-seek game known in New Netherland, is plausible but separated from the English evidence by a long documentary gap; it should be presented as a hypothesis rather than a solved derivation.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- hooky
- play hookey
- play hookie
Usage Examples
- The cousins played hooky and spent the morning beside the canal.
- I am not playing hooky; the office really is closed today.