Catchword: hocker

Filed under: English, Yiddish, United States

Part of speech: n.

Quotation: The father’s self-representation as Hocker confirms the son’s characterization of him, in which an authorial Roth reaches for a recognizable, if not entirely appealing, type glossed for the goyim. The writer supplies the dictionary entry in parenthesis: “Hock: a Yiddishism that in this context means to badger, to bludgeon, to hammer with warnings and edicts and pleas—in short, to drill a hole in somebody’s head with words.”

Author:
Nancy K. Miller

Article, document, publication, web site:
Bequest and Betrayal: Memoirs of a Parent’s Death

Date of publication:
Oct. 1, 1996

Page number:
32

Original date published:
Mar. 1, 2000

This cite belongs to a full entry for hocker.