Scottish National Dictionary (1700–)
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First published 1960 (SND Vol. V).
This entry has not been updated since then but may contain minor corrections and revisions.
Quotation dates: 1824-1833
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HOOKY, adj. Also hookey. Hook-shaped, crooked; fig. crafty (m.Lth. 1957); grasping (Rxb. 1957).Rxb. 1824 Trans. Hawick Arch. Soc. (1922) 36:
Be hooky and handy, and cunningly hide, That hungerness never may grieve ye.
Comb. hooky-crooky, (1) adj., not straight-forward, dishonest; (2) n., an underhand act, a piece of trickery.(1) Sc. 1833 Fraser's Mag. VIII. 201:
The two or three thousand who manage to keep themselves . . . by hookey-crookey gambling ways, as brother Jonathan would say.(2) Ayr. 1830 Galt Lawrie Todd II. 141:
He was coming round me with one of his hooky-crookies.
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"Hooky adj.". Dictionary of the Scots Language. 2004. Scottish Language Dictionaries Ltd. Accessed 13 Dec 2025 <http://www.dsl.ac.uk/entry/snd/hooky>
