hocker n. a person who harangues, beseeches, or talks persuasively; a person who trades in information, gossip, or personal connections; someone who is (obnoxiously) ambitious. Editorial Note: Hocker is common and well-known to yeshiva students in New York City. Related etymologically to, but not derived from, hawk ‘to embarrass, annoy, or disconcert,’ which, according to DARE, is used in Mid-Atlantic states such as North Carolina and Virginia as a synonym for hack, more commonly found in the American South and South Midlands. The noun variant of hack means “a state of embarrassment, confusion, or defeat.” The adjective hacked means “embarrassed, annoyed, cowed, flustered” and dates as far back as 1892. It’s also, therefore, related to to hack off ‘to annoy.’ A Jewish correspondent from Boston also reports using huck to mean “to nag,” probably just a pronunciation and spelling variant of the Yiddish hock. Etymological Note: < hock ‘to nag, criticize’ (According to Leo Rosten, perhaps shortened from Hok mir nit kayn chainik ‘don’t knock me a teapot’ = ‘don’t harangue me; stop nagging, annoying, or pestering me’) < Yiddish hock, hok, or hakn ‘to chop, strike, knock’ < German hack ‘to cut, chop, or strike (with a blow)’; High German hock ‘to hit, chop’ (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Patrick in New York City is curious about the term ride or die, which describes a friend, fan, or romantic partner who is devoted to the end. The expression shows up in the mid-1990s in hip hop and the work of Tupac Shakur and The Lox, and often...
Why do we write the sound of a dog barking as bow wow? Isn’t that noise more like woof, woof or arf, arf or ruff ruff? Surprisingly, the oldest of these is bow wow, or as William Shakespeare wrote in The Tempest (Bookshop|Amazon), bowgh wawgh...
Love this site. Might I comment on your etymology?
“< Yid. hock or hok ‘to nag, criticize’”
1. I would transliterate the word “hak”, according to the accepted YIVO standards. The Yiddish infinitive would be “hakn.”
2. The Yid. word “hak[n]” does not mean “to nag, criticize.” It means “to chop.” “To nag, criticize” is Yinglish. Rosten’s book, though valuable, is a Yinglish dictionary, not a Yiddish one – though the phrase “hak mir nisht keyn tshaynik” is, of course, well-attested in Yiddish.
Your comments are good ones; I’ve changed the entry to reflect them.
This is great, it is also what I am always accused of, maybe it is natural but love to argue.