hocus
Language: English
Part of speech: verb
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈhəʊkəs/
rhymes: -əʊkəs
Forms: form: hocuses
form: hocusses
form: hocusing
form: hocussing
form: hocused
form: hocused
form: hocussed
form: hocussed
Etymology: Shortened from hocus-pocus. The verb is from the noun.
Senses: examples: text: 1677, Poor Robin’s Visions, London: Arthur Boldero, Eighth Vision, p. 117,
[…] to contemplate the miseries of a poor Poetick life, or study some well laid plot to Hocus his Landlady into a further credence or belief […]
text: HOCUS. To cheat. Hence the more modern term hoax.
ref: 1847, James Orchard Halliwell, Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, London: John Russell Smith, page 453:
text: “Well, I reckon you have lived in the country. I thought maybe you was trying to hocus me again […].”
ref: 1884 December 10, Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], “Chapter 11”, in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: (Tom Sawyer’s Comrade) […], London: Chatto & Windus, […], →OCLC:
text: “You really are married by a priest or parson, not just hocussing me?”
ref: 1936, Miles Franklin, chapter 20, in All That Swagger:
glosses: To play a trick on, to trick (someone); to hoax; to cheat.
examples: text: […] but him they intended to disable by a trick then newly introduced amongst robbers, and termed hocussing, i. e., clandestinely drugging the liquor of the victim with laudanum […]
ref: 1855, Thomas De Quincey, “Three Memorable Murders: A Sequel to ‘Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts’”, in The Note Book of an English Opium-Eater, Boston: Ticknor & Fields, page 65:
text: The last of the criminal cases are the thieves, who admit of being classified as follows: […] (2.) Those who hocus or plunder persons by stupefying […]
ref: 1862, Henry Mayhew, John Binny, The Criminal Prisons of London and Scenes of Prison Life, London: Griffin, Bohn, Introduction, § 4, page 46:
text: […] he frantically reiterated his charge, that he had been robbed and hocussed in that house, that night, by Mrs. Brandon.
ref: 1861 January – 1862 August, W[illiam] M[akepeace] Thackeray, “The Bearer of the Bowstring”, in The Adventures of Philip on His Way through the World; […], volume III, London: Smith, Elder and Co., […], published 1862, →OCLC, page 207:
text: 1905, Baroness Emmuska Orczy, “The Hocussing of Cigarette” in Baroness Orczy’s Old Man in the Corner: The Old Man in the Corner, The Case of Miss Elliott, The Glasgow Mystery, Landsville, Pennsylvania: Coachwhip Publications, 2010, p. 243,
Then I had a good think on the subject of the hocussing of Cigarette, and I was reluctantly bound to admit that once again the man in the corner had found the only possible solution to the mystery.
glosses: To stupefy (someone) with drugged liquor (especially in order to steal from them).
examples: text: […] I think the wine of them two Governors was—I will not say a hocussed wine, but fur from a wine as was elthy for the mind.
ref: 1864 May – 1865 November, Charles Dickens, chapter 12, in Our Mutual Friend. […], volume I, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1865, →OCLC:
text: [He] served them out three fingers of rum apiece, which the bo’sun took upon himself to hocus. By latest accounts, they’re sleeping it off […]
ref: 1907, Arthur Quiller-Couch, “His Excellency’s Prize-Fight”, in Merry-Garden and Other Stories, London: Methuen, page 189:
glosses: To drug (liquor).
examples: text: I had a healthy appetite, but the tradition was that all the food was unutterably bad, adulterated, hocussed.
ref: 1915, Arthur Christopher Benson, “Schooldays”, in Escape and Other Essays, London: Smith, Elder, pages 197–198:
text: “Those rotten Huns have been hocussing our grub.”
ref: 1916, Percy F. Westerman, chapter 3, in Rounding Up the Raider, London: Blackie & Son:
glosses: To adulterate (food).