Hide and Seek

[00:06] Ooh, we doing under Googles that was the play of super excited told us we had to
[00:17] say we said we signed up for it in the end it's gonna be better and more true
[00:25] than Google can give you all right to wrap up the show we you've got an
[00:32] under Google for you Jason did you have the question for us this week I did yeah
[00:39] I forget when we were talking about this I think maybe Ethan had a day off of
[00:44] school or we were keeping him home for some reason and we were talking about
[00:48] playing hooky and we didn't oh yeah we were explaining to him what playing hooky
[00:55] met and we're like yeah it's you know you're just you're out of school but
[01:02] you're not really sick you'd just do whatever but we were like where does
[01:07] that even come from why why is hooky mean not doing the thing you're supposed
[01:14] to do why are you playing it and to begin how do you spell it how do you spell hooky
[01:20] is it h-o-o-k-y or ie I'd have gone with ie but I'm not actually sure I've ever
[01:28] seen this word written I wrote down I wrote it as ie in my notes as well but
[01:35] I thought it was why okay h-o-o-k-y and you're playing the hooky you're playing
[01:43] hooky now it's not to my mind it's not just doing something you're not supposed
[01:49] to be doing specifically just that one thing right of not being in school when
[01:55] you're supposed to be or have you used it in broader context I have used it in
[02:01] reference to work like if I'm which I you know if anybody's listening that has
[02:06] been a manager I've never done this before obviously if I were to take a day
[02:10] off and and not work I would call that plain hooky sure sure but same idea
[02:19] you're supposed to be in a place and you're not in said place correct yeah
[02:31] I'm with you it's I mean it's definitely school or work one of the two and it's an
[02:39] intentional dodging of you know attendance right okay I say attendance as
[02:47] opposed to like activity or other responsibility that you're supposed to do
[02:53] or something all right yeah I agree with that just yeah so where yeah so what is
[03:04] the hook is it related to an actual hook I so my first thought is that it's like
[03:16] the caricature of like the vaudevillian like you know hook off the stage right
[03:22] me too that's the exact same thing and you know there did used to be like
[03:25] truant officers like that was a thing okay yeah you know I can't imagine they
[03:33] were employing vaudevillian hooks didn't have kids back to class but it could be
[03:41] in the sense of yeah you're playing you're like playing the odds of getting
[03:45] caught yeah or whatever right of getting nabbed by the truant officer and getting
[03:52] sent back to school okay okay I like that I like that for some reason I don't know
[04:00] why but the the the hooky part for some reason sounds dutch to me I don't know where
[04:07] that comes from like I don't know if that's like yeah I don't know where is
[04:14] our hook is involved in this it can be
[04:21] yeah the Dutch are too good to skip school I feel like mm-hmm just too well
[04:36] behaved to people well they probably are give it enough time off to that they
[04:41] don't even need that right sure yeah it would be it'd be overkill exactly
[04:48] yeah hmm so we're thinking this is all right so following our threat of thought
[05:00] if it's truant officers when are truant officers at their peak this is like in
[05:05] the 50s 60s 40s 50s 60s what are you doing less I'm less familiar with the
[05:12] truant officer are they they're just like a police officer that's only trying to
[05:15] like find kids that aren't going to school I believe it would be like you
[05:20] know like now they have what are called school resource officers which are
[05:23] basically a security guards at a school so it would be employed by the school and
[05:29] you know during the school day once that all the kids are in class that person
[05:34] doesn't have a ton to do except go out and find the kids that aren't aren't
[05:39] there but like I'm thinking the reason I say that time frame is it's beyond the
[05:45] point where everybody's working on farms you know going to school is just like
[05:52] whatever great you went to school awesome and like it's become probably mandated by
[05:57] that point right well so on some level like public education was not just for
[06:08] the sake of public education like some of it was to get the roaming gangs of
[06:11] children off the street sure yeah in urban areas back in the day so I suspect
[06:18] that the truant officer or some function like it was probably at its heyday at the
[06:23] very beginning of you know major public schools because you were it wasn't like
[06:30] an accepted thing yet right kids were like right don't want to not gonna and
[06:35] so when is that that's like in the turn of the century I would guess some time
[06:44] around then I mean it yeah I would have guessed yeah early 1900s okay okay
[06:54] basically yeah once you have large-scale urban migration I think is when you know
[07:03] we start to get this you know phenomenon yes we can't have these immigrant kids
[07:08] running around in our street and they'll frown on us if we throw them in jail
[07:18] right we can't make them work anymore yeah so it has to be post child labor
[07:21] laws yeah and yeah so that would be yeah yeah early 1900s I guess right yeah I
[07:32] like that a lot okay is it it's not related to to hookers at all hmm
[07:42] hooker was named after that was like the Civil War general right that's where that
[07:49] is that right they didn't know that there was a Civil War general named named
[07:54] hooker that I remember yes who I think like that fun but so much so that they
[08:07] stopped calling them ladies of the night if you if you rename an entire industry
[08:16] you the oldest industry right that is that's impressive that is impressive
[08:27] Wilt Chamberlain ask I would say yeah all right so let's go and and this is
[08:33] an American thing we think I guess or Dutch or Dutch Dutch or I could see I
[08:42] could see American Dutch Industrial Revolution yeah post child labor laws
[08:48] like Britain yeah like being like we got to get these urchins off the street
[08:52] they're doing the same thing that we are they're like these roaming bands and
[08:57] children we can't make them we can't make them risk their tiny little fingers
[09:02] anymore so I guess we'll teach them how to read all right I'm saying I'm saying
[09:15] that I would I think it's British but and then we just stole it I don't know
[09:22] why I said just to be different well Jason I think you were on to something
[09:35] hmm from on the Dutch on the Dutch thing oh wow interesting at least what
[09:43] I'm seeing here is that the roots seem to be from at least this this one
[09:51] vocabulary calm is saying that phrase comes from 19th century New York City
[09:57] slang and it's thought to have its roots in the Dutch word hokea or hide-and-seek
[10:03] really crazy it's stuck in the back of my head and they're spelling it with a
[10:14] h-o-o-k-y and that's how I that's how I would think that it was spelled so yeah
[10:24] yeah so Jim and I seems to think that hook yeah it means little corner or
[10:28] nook hmm so you're like hiding in a little nook yeah cutting classes and
[10:35] hiding out to avoid detection the Dutch played a significant role in founding New
[10:39] York where its first known use occurred hook equals steel another suggestion is
[10:47] the sense from an old English slang term hook which meant to steal mmm
[10:53] skipping wishing area is stealing time away from your obligations or maybe you
[10:58] were using that time to just steal shit and it seems like it's much earlier
[11:04] than we said it's like mid early to mid 19th century yeah yeah I think yeah
[11:13] and also yeah another dictionary is saying that the the the word that word
[11:17] hook hook you is nook corner a spot to hide so I mean it's the same you know
[11:27] same idea where you're hot you're hiding from from your responsibilities
[11:31] wherever that may be and it seems to have originated amongst schoolboys yeah
[11:38] so in dictionary of American isms from 1848 John Russell Bartlett defined it
[11:47] it's to play hooky is to play truant a term used among schoolboys hmm all right
[11:57] hook yeah hook yeah it was a good one I'm gonna say we nailed it without any
[12:08] particular basis in fact well you said the word Dutch we didn't say the word
[12:14] Dutch and we knew what it meant and you weren't far we weren't far off on the
[12:21] time it was yeah it wasn't like it was plenty no none of the plenty's it was
[12:31] it was pretty close I would say all things all things considered so I'd say I
[12:39] give us the stamp nailed it sounds wonderful