hock

Clipping of hockamore, from German.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /hɒk/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• (US) IPA^(key): /hɑk/
• Rhymes: -ɒk
• Homophone: hawk (cot–caught merger)

hock (countable and uncountable, plural hocks)

1. A Rhenish wine, of a light yellow color, either sparkling or still, from the Hochheim region; often applied to all Rhenish wines.

   Synonym: Hochheimer

   • 1891 [1887], Oscar Wilde, “The Model Millionaire”, in Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories‎^[1]:

     That night he strolled into the Palette Club about eleven o’clock, and found Trevor sitting by himself in the smoking-room drinking hock and seltzer.

   • 1938, Norman Lindsay, Age of Consent, 1st Australian edition, Sydney, N.S.W.: Ure Smith, published 1962, →OCLC, page 158:

     The dinner that they sat down to in the fly-specked dining-room was of boiled beef and carrots, with a turgid ginger pudding to follow, though Grierson went down to the cellar himself and found some dusty bottles of hock, overlooked for years because there was no demand for it in a beer-drinking community.

• claret, sack, tent

From Middle English hough, hoche, hokke, from Old English hōh, from Proto-Germanic *hanhaz (compare West Frisian hakke, Dutch hak, German Low German Hacke, Hack (“heel”)), from Proto-Indo-European *kenk- (compare Lithuanian kìnka (“leg, thigh, knee-cap”), kenklė̃ (“knee-cap”), Sanskrit कङ्काल (kaṅkāla, “skeleton”)).

hock (countable and uncountable, plural hocks)

1. (countable) The tarsal joint of a digitigrade quadruped, such as a horse, pig or dog.
2. Meat from that part of a food animal.
3. (countable) The hollow behind the knee.

hock (third-person singular simple present hocks, present participle hocking, simple past and past participle hocked)

1. (transitive) To disable by cutting the tendons of the hock; to hamstring; to hough.

• hamstring, hough, hox

• See Thesaurus:disable

From the phrase in hock, circa 1855-60, from Dutch hok (“hutch, hovel, jail, pen, doghouse”).^[1] Compare also Middle English hukken (“to sell; peddle; sell at auction”), see huck.

hock (third-person singular simple present hocks, present participle hocking, simple past and past participle hocked)

2. (transitive, colloquial) To leave with a pawnbroker as security for a loan.

hock (uncountable) (informal)

1. Pawn, obligation as collateral for a loan.

   He needed $750 to get his guitar out of hock at the pawnshop.

   • 2012 April 25, Patty Murphy, “Business bulletin”, in Associated Press, page 10A:

     But Ford Motor Co. needs another agency, either Standard & Poor's or Moody's, to make the same upgrade before it can get its blue oval logo, factories and other assets out of hock.

2. Debt.

   They were in hock to the bank for $35 million.

3. Installment purchase.
   • 2007, Tara Hanks, The Mmm Girl: Marilyn Monroe, by Herself, page 28:

     Later, Uncle Doc bought a couch on hock, then a bed.

4. Prison.

• Hock Monday
• Hock Tuesday

From Yiddish האַק (hak), imperative singular form of האַקן (hakn, “to knock”), from the idiomatic expression האַק מיר נישט קיין טשײַניק (hak mir nisht keyn tshaynik, “don't knock a teakettle at me”).

• hak

hock (third-person singular simple present hocks, present participle hocking, simple past and past participle hocked)

1. (US) To bother; to pester; to annoy incessantly.

Probably imitative (a variant form of hawk (“cough”)), like hack (“cough”), although see that entry for more.^[1]

hock (third-person singular simple present hocks, present participle hocking, simple past and past participle hocked)

1. Alternative form of hawk (“cough, clear one's throat of phlegm”)

• hocker

hock (plural hocks)

1. Alternative form of hawk (“cough”)

   Synonym: hocking

   • 2019 March 26, Alvin Townley, Captured: An American Prisoner of War in North Vietnam (Scholastic Focus), Scholastic Inc., →ISBN:

     One or two coughs signified 1 or 2. Clearing a throat meant 3. A loud hock was 4 and a loud sneeze or spit indicated 5. The new system gained favor. Jerry figured the guards must have thought the POWs were near death given the volume of bodily noise coming from Alcatraz.

   • 2006 09, Barry Yelton, Scarecrow in Gray, iUniverse, →ISBN, page 99:

     […] said with another cough and a loud hock.

hock (plural hocks)

1. (card games) The last card turned up in the game of faro.

   Coordinate term: soda

• from soda to hock

• Koch