hocus

Etymology

Definitions

1. 1

   To play a trick on, to trick (someone)

   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 credence or belief […]
   • 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 […].”
2. 2

   To 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.
3. 3

   To 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 […]
4. ›+ 5 more definitionsshow fewer

   1. 4

      To 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.”
   2. 5

      A magician, illusionist, one who practises sleight of hand.

   3. 6

      One who cheats or deceives.

   4. 7

      Trick

      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:
   5. 8

      Drugged liquor.

The neighborhood

• neighborhocus-pocus