Hook

How to spell hook

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce hook

What does hook mean?

1. nounA curved or bent piece of metal or plastic used for catching, holding, or hanging something.
2. verbTo catch, fasten, or attach something using a curved device or a sudden grabbing motion.

Hook in a sentence

• noun

  She hung her coat on the hook by the door.

• verb

  Try to hook the rope around the post before the boat drifts.

• noun

  The fish slipped off the hook before he could reel it in.

• verb

  He managed to hook a large trout on his first cast.

Where does hook come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Hook comes from the Old English 'hoc', which named a curved or bent piece of metal used for catching or holding, and it goes back to a Proto-Germanic root meaning 'bend' or 'angle'. Close relatives survive across the Germanic family, including the Dutch 'hoek' (corner or angle) and the German 'Haken' (hook). The underlying idea was always something curved that catches and holds, whether a fish, a coat, or a piece of cloth. Over the centuries the word spread into many figurative uses, such as the boxing 'hook', the fishing phrase 'off the hook', and the catchy musical 'hook' of a pop song. Because it is a short, native English word with a simple consonant-vowel-consonant shape, its spelling has stayed remarkably stable for over a thousand years.

How the word is built

• hook (single Germanic root meaning a bent or curved piece of metal; no prefix or suffix)