hook

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   A curved piece of metal or plastic used to hang, hold, or catch things.

   Hang your coat on the hook by the door.

2. 2
   verb

   To catch or fasten something with a hook.

   He hooked a large fish on his first cast.

3. 3
   noun

   A sharp curve or bend in the shape of a hook.

   The road makes a sudden hook to the left at the bridge.

Multiword verbs with hook

• hook up Phrasal verb B2

  to connect devices or systems so that they can work together

Appears in

Simplified etymology

Hook is an Old English word for an implement used to catch, hold, or suspend things. The mid-19th-century expression hook, line, and sinker evokes a fish swallowing all the fishing tackle and emphasizes that someone has been completely deceived or tricked. The contemporary expression off the hook compares escape from trouble or difficulty to a fish wriggling free of a hook.

From Middle English hoke, from Old English hōc (“angle, point, hook”), from Proto-West Germanic *hōk, from Proto-Germanic *hōkaz, variant of *hakô (“hook”), probably ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *kog-, *keg-, *keng- (“peg, hook, claw”). Cognates Cognate with Scots huke, huik (“hook”), West Frisian and Dutch hoek (“hook, angle, corner”), Low German Hook, Huuk, German Hook (“small cluster of farms”), Faroese høkja (“crutch”), Icelandic hækja (“crutch”), Norn hek (“crutch”), Finnish kuokka (“hoe, mattock”). Related to hake.

Topics

External links

• Google Images
• Cambridge Dictionary
• Wiktionary