/ˈhəʊkəs/
OriginShortened from hocus-pocus. The verb is from the noun.
- To play a trick on, to trick (someone); to hoax; to cheat.
“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 cre”
“HOCUS. To cheat. Hence the more modern term hoax.”
““Well, I reckon you have lived in the country. I thought maybe you was trying to hocus me again […].””
- obsoleteTo stupefy (someone) with drugged liquor (especially in order to steal from them).
“[…] 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 […]”
“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 […]”
“[…] he frantically reiterated his charge, that he had been robbed and hocussed in that house, that night, by Mrs. Brandon.”
- obsoleteTo drug (liquor).
“[…] 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.”
“[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 […]”
- obsoleteTo adulterate (food).
“I had a healthy appetite, but the tradition was that all the food was unutterably bad, adulterated, hocussed.”
““Those rotten Huns have been hocussing our grub.””
- obsoleteA magician, illusionist, one who practises sleight of hand.
“Certainly he was the bravest Ambodexter of his time, and this blinded age, or that ever was among us dull Northern people; and among the multitude of his Tricks, I shall commend to the Hocusses of Bar”
“I called freely for what was in the house, which was readily brought me; but when the servants beheld with what cele[r]ity, (Hocus like) and cleanly conveyance, I had disposed of what was before me, t”
“1689, Roger L’Estrange (translator), Twenty-Two Select Colloquies out of Erasmus Roterodamus, London: R. Bentley & R. Sare, p. 33,
’Tis rather to exercise our Curiosity, and keep us from Idleness, or ”
- obsoleteOne who cheats or deceives.
“1685, Robert South, “A Sermon Preached at Christ-Church, Oxon, Before the University, May 3. 1685” in Twelve Sermons Preached upon Several Occasions, London: Thomas Bennett, 1692, p. 523,
[…] when thy”
“I have the Originals at This Present in my Hand, and there is the Paw of Tong and Otes so manifestly in the very Writing of them; as if they had not thought it worth the while to Disguise the Cheat. I”
- Trick; trickery.
“As in almost every Chapter of his Book, so in this Seventh, he has a new Hocus to carry on his old design […]”
“The Jugler and the Judge, too, may complain,
For both now strive to cheat the World in vain;
In slight and shift and Trick they both agree,
But a quick Eye may all their Hocus see:”
“1871, Benjamin Jowett, letter to Florence Nightingale dated 29 September, 1871, cited in Edward Tyas Cook, The Life of Florence Nightingale, London: Macmillan, 1913, Volume 2, Part 7, Chapter 1, p. 22”
- obsoleteDrugged liquor.
Formshocuses(present, singular, third-person) · hocusses(present, singular, third-person) · hocusing(participle, present) · hocussing(participle, present) · hocused(participle, past) · hocused(past) · hocussed(participle, past) · hocussed(past) · hocuses(plural)