hocus and pocus
Language: English
Part of speech: verb
Forms: form: hocuses and pocuses
form: hocusses and pocusses
form: hocusing and pocusing
form: hocussing and pocussing
form: hocused and pocused
form: hocused and pocused
form: hocussed and pocussed
form: hocussed and pocussed
Senses: examples: text: Says she, “My dear Cindy, you shan’t at home stop / While they sport their toes at a twopenny hop; / You shall have coach and horses, and shut up the shop, / And wed perhaps to a very fine fellow.” / So she hocussed and pocussed the coach and the pair, / The footman, the coachman, and all else were there, / With a bran span new barber to curl up her hair— / A regular swell Cinderella.
ref: 1873, “Cinderella”, in Trade Truths and Fireside Fancies. Selected from the Miscellaneous Writings of Benjamin Andrade., London: […] W. H. & L. Collingridge, […] , page 122:
text: Thebaic tincture gtts. vi / Gum ammoniacum O / Sig: One scruple q 4 hours // The beautiful thing about that prescription was that it was harmless. Many wrote prescriptions like that only for show, just Hocusing and Pocusing.
ref: 1938, Annals of Medical History, page 345, column 2:
text: Your attention is presently focused / On a grasshopping red-legged locust. / If threatened or chased, / He will vanish post haste, / Just as if he had hocused and pocused.
ref: 1966 August 7, Richard Haun, “Haunimals”, in Democrat and Chronicle, Rochester, N.Y., page 2M, column 5:
text: As the dean of the league’s managers, Earl Weaver also has acted as a magician at times, hocusing and pocusing the Orioles into races they really shouldn’t have been in. This season he may have to pull another trick.
ref: 1982 April 4, New York Times News Service, “East: Brewers may make it now”, in Sunday Herald-Leader, number 14, Lexington, Ky., section “Baltimore”, page D5, column 1:
text: Ivy yearned to be grown up. When you were a child, you did what they wanted. Willy-nilly. Helter-skelter. Pell and mell. You were hocussed and pocussed from one place to another with no say about it at all. You could have friends where you were, like the school you were going to, the apartment you lived in where you and your sister had a bedroom together and Francis one of his own. You could lose all that when they decided you would.
ref: 1986, Mary Stolz, Ivy Larkin, published 1989, →ISBN, page 19:
text: A few moments later that malodorous mist tore apart like the shreds of an old shirt and drifted away on a cool night breeze. The moon shone down once more upon the waters of the Lake. / ‘You see,’ Haroun told his father, ‘it wasn’t only a story, after all.’ / Rashid actually laughed out loud in delight. ‘You’re a blinking good man in a tight spot, Haroun Khalifa,’ he said with an emphatic nod. ‘Hats off to you.’ / ‘Gullible Mr Rashid,’ cried Snooty Buttoo, ‘surely you don’t believe the lad’s hocusing and pocusing? Freak weather conditions came, and then went. No more to be said.’
ref: 1990, Salman Rushdie, “The Dull Lake”, in Haroun and the Sea of Stories, published 2000, →ISBN:
text: A gray-haired witch with a memorable nose scampers across a darkened stage, hocusing and pocusing as a group of schoolchildren gasp and cuddle.
ref: 1998 February 14, “Center Place”, in Dave Nicholson, editor, The Tampa Tribune, page 21, column 2:
text: “Hocused and pocused,” Harry said. “Now try and focus.” / I rolled my eyes. “C’mon, Harry, try it in English.”
ref: 2004, Jack Kerley, The Hundredth Man, Dutton, →ISBN:
text: The wigs and makeup by Tom Watson helped create a coarse and hairy witch, exactly the kind you want hocusing and pocusing around stage.
ref: 2007 November 16, Peter Dobrin, “Orchestra sour in a magically sweet ‘Hänsel’”, in The Philadelphia Inquirer, number 169, page W28, column 3:
text: He hocused and pocused, and locused and focused, / Did what he could to enlarge. / His telescope strained, and it loudly complained, / But it held on, like mad, to its charge.
ref: 2010, Gregory Pastoll, “The Astronomer Royal”, in The King of Kafooni ..and other stories in rhyming verse, AuthorHouse, →ISBN, page 1:
text: I could go through walls and windows just to take a look / Other lives fizzing and jingling as I walk about in my old / Black coat /[…] / Hocusing and pocusing in my outsider way / Invisible and interfering, stirring the dinner stew / Adding just a bit too much pepper.
ref: 2016, Veronica Aldous, “Float”, in Mortal, →ISBN, page 23:
text: Then it happened: the arrow turned in mid-air, its point aimed right at the wyvern’s face. It was like she said—I was in charge of the bow and arrows, she was in charge of hocusing and pocusing them on course. You could call us a sniper and his magical spotter.
ref: 2019, Madoka Kotani, Buck Naked in Another World, volume 1, Seven Seas Entertainment, published 2020, →ISBN:
text: The title of Smith’s first magic film is to the point: The Vanishing Lady (1898). Blackton operated the camera while Smith hocused and pocused one of their wives away. Presumably there were no trap doors through which a woman could disappear in the stages of the YMCAs and churches where Smith entertained, but thanks to moving pictures he was able to add this most basic of illusions to his repertoire.
ref: 2021, Andrew A. Erish, “1875–1904”, in Vitagraph: America’s First Great Motion Picture Studio, University Press of Kentucky, →ISBN, page 19:
glosses: Alternative form of hocus-pocus.