Playing Hooky from school obviously meant skipping a day; at work it means taking an unauthorized holiday, usually by calling in sick when we really are feeling just fine, or saying that we’re having car trouble, or some other unverifiable excuse. However the exact term “Playing Hooky” (as if it were some type of game) is a mystery to me; does anybody know the origins of said term? And what are your favorite tales of times that our SDMB members have played hooky from either work or school?
For some reason I saw the entry on Wikipedia the other day and I thought I was losing my mind when it was consistently spelled “hookey” without an alternate spelling. I had never seen this spelling before in my life and I’m glad I’m not the only one who spelled it hooky.
“Playing hooky” [I’ve always spelled it hookie, myself] is probably derived from the Dutch term hoekje (spelen) ‘hide-and-seek’. The Dutch word hoek means ‘corner’-- the boys in 17th-century New Amsterdam played this game around the corners of the street. Hide-and-seek was a different game back then–the players had to search for a hidden object. It wasn’t until the 19th century that it was applied to skipping school. Info taken from Random House’s Maven-of-the-Day.
The OED disagrees, showing that the word is derived from “hook” as in “By hook or by crook” which dates from 14th century England. In the 19th century, that evolved into “hooky-crooky,” which meant “to cheat.” That would transfer to cheating by not going to school (and possibly, those playing hooky were also playing hooky-crooky – trying to scam people) and dropping “-crooky.”
The term does not appear in English until 1848 – a bit late to be derived from the Dutch in New Amsterdam.
Okay, I’ll go with OED in almost every case.