Other forms: hooks
A hook is a curved piece of metal that things hang from. A coat hook, hang it on the hook, a fish hook.
The curve is what holds: the weight pulls the load further into the bend rather than out of it. In music, the hook is the phrase that catches the listener and is the most valuable few seconds of a song. In boxing, a hook is a curved punch. Note by hook or by crook; off the hook, meaning free of blame; and hooked, meaning addicted.
1nounhookA curved piece of metal that things hang from.
“Hang your coat on the hook behind the door.”
2nouncatchyThe catchy phrase in a song.
“The song has a great hook that everyone sings along to.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
hook is a curved fastening.
Old English hoc meant an angle or point, from a Germanic root. Hook, hank and the Dutch hoek, a corner, all come from the same bend.
Proto-Indo-European
*kog-
Proto-Germanic
*hōkaz
Proto-West Germanic
*hōk
Old English
hōc — angle, point, hook
Middle English
hoke
English, today
hook
Built from
From Middle English hoke, from Old English hōc (“angle, point, hook”), from Proto-West Germanic hōk, from Proto-Germanic hōkaz, variant of hakô (“hook”), probably ultimately from Proto-Indo-European kog-, keg-, keng- (“peg, hook, claw”). 2 Cognate with Scots huke, huik (“hook”), West Frisian - and Dutch hoek (“hook, angle, corner”), Low German Hook, Huuk, German Hook (“small cluster of farms”), Faroese høkja (“crutch”), Icelandic hækja (“crutch”), nrn hek (“crutch”), Finnish kuokka (“hoe, mattock”). Related to hake.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA