HOKEY • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Hokey

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/hˈoʊki/ Listen

Hokey

adjective

(compar. hokier; superl. hokiest)

Effusively or insincerely emotional. Synonyms: bathetic, drippy, kitschy, maudlin, mawkish, mushy, schmaltzy, schmalzy, sentimental, slushy, soppy, soupy. "Maudlin expressions of sympathy" , "Mushy effusiveness" , "A schmaltzy song" , "Sentimental soap operas" , "Slushy poetry"

Artificially formal. Synonyms: artificial, contrived, stilted. "Contrived coyness" , "A stilted letter of acknowledgment" , "When people try to correct their speech they develop a stilted pronunciation"

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Etymology of 'Hokey'

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"Hokey" Quotes from Famous Books

... couldn't drive fast, and so I got there about the same time the head of the column began to arrive. You never saw anything like it in your life. The strikers had been living out there in a good deal of style—with sentries and republican government and all that. By the great hokey-pokey! they couldn't keep it up a minute when their wives came. They knew 'em too well. They just bulged in without rhyme or rule. Every woman went for her husband and told him to pack up and go home. Some of 'em—the artful kind—begged and wheedled and cried; said they ...

— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay

... sir; they are never lively in biting so early as this—they're not set about feeding in earnest yet. Hilloa! by the Hokey I have him!" shouted Murphy. Furlong looked on with great anxiety, as Murphy made a well-feigned struggle with ...

— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover

... the flare of petroleum torches lighted push-carts piled with fruit or laden with bowls of lemonade and hokey-pokey. Sidewalks were crowded with shabby people gossiping in groups or passing east and west—about what squalid business only ...

— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers

... Hokey Fly!" sez Peter Begg. "Suppose 'e comes 'ome with a wooden leg. Suppose 'e isn't fit to darnce at all, Then, ain't we 'asty fixin' up this ball? A little tournament at Bridge is my Idear," sez Peter. "Be ...

— Digger Smith • C. J. Dennis

Words linked to "Hokey" : unnatural, emotional, affected