A word with two very different lives: in its respectable sense, a hocker is simply someone who pawns or hocks items at a pawnshop.
A word with two very different lives: in its respectable sense, a hocker is simply someone who pawns or hocks items at a pawnshop. In its grosser slang incarnation, a hocker is a thick wad of phlegm that someone hacks up and spits out — the kind of productive cough result that makes bystanders wince. The phlegm meaning likely derives from the Yiddish/German 'hucken' (to cough up), while the pawn meaning comes from Dutch 'hok' (debt). Both are in wide use.
He left a hocker on the pavement outside the pub, earning a withering look from the woman walking behind him.
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Regional slang from around the English-speaking world — British, Australian, Irish, Caribbean, Nigerian, Filipino, AAVE, and the hyphenated-English dialects that make the internet sound local.
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(US, rare) A pawnshop.
An informal American term for a pawnshop — the kind of place where you trade your guitar, old jewelry, or gaming console for quick cash, hoping to buy it back later (you usually don't). While "pawnshop" is the dominant term today, "hockshop" has a grittier, older-school ring to it that fits blues lyrics and hardboiled fiction perfectly. To "hock" something is to pawn it, and the shop where that transaction goes down is the hockshop.
One who, or that which, hogs.
(slang) A wad of phlegm spat out by hocking.
One who hocks or pawns an item.