How to Use hooky in a Sentence

hooky

noun
  • Oh, if ever there was a day to play hooky from work, just look outside.
    — Seattle Times Staff, The Seattle Times, 11 Mar. 2018
  • The brat who punched my brother wasn’t the only kid playing hooky that day.
    — al, 21 Dec. 2022
  • Halloween falls on a Saturday this year, so there's no need to play hooky!
    — Tierney McAfee, Country Living, 14 July 2020
  • Her assailants, a group of teenage girls playing hooky from school, had not broken into her home.
    — Emily Langer, Washington Post, 18 Nov. 2020
  • Time to play a little work-hooky, sidle up to a bar somewhere and take part in an all-too rare joy around here.
    — Paul Daugherty, The Enquirer, 30 Sep. 2020
  • Trinkets then jumps back in the timeline to reveal the events that brought the trio to their morning of hooky.
    — Ariana Romero, refinery29.com, 26 Aug. 2020
  • Lots of office workers tend to play a little hooky when the big boss is away in August.
    — Emily Jane Fox, vanityfair.com, 7 Aug. 2017
  • No ordinary hooky-playing this, the kids planned to clean up Wind and Sea beach.
    — San Diego Union-Tribune, 22 Apr. 2022
  • That hooky seems to have been forgiven by his boss, who sometimes trains with him and watched the match from the players’ box on court.
    — Chris Morris, Fortune, 16 Feb. 2023
  • Let There Be Witchery has all the right hooky, Venom-laden sleaze.
    — Andy O'Connor, SPIN, 15 Mar. 2022
  • Americans love few things more than a sporting circus or an excuse to slink out of the office and play hooky from work en masse.
    — Roger Bennett, GQ, 12 June 2018
  • The songs that soundtracked our year were genre-blurring, empowering, hooky and game-changers in their own way.
    — Griselda Flores, Billboard, 27 Dec. 2022
  • After Legg fudged the time card of a friend playing hooky, the friend was transferred and Byrnes brought in to fill his spot.
    — Justin Nobel, Longreads, 5 Sep. 2017
  • Yesterday 2 Dems got caught using Pelosi's proxy voting scheme to play hooky.
    — Zachary Halaschak, Washington Examiner, 26 Feb. 2021
  • But Halloween is a Monday this year — don't get any ideas about playing hooky on Tuesday.
    — Marisa Lascala, Good Housekeeping, 11 May 2022
  • Their crimes — shoplifting, playing hooky, smoking pot — may be quotidian, but their sense of alienation is not.
    — J. Hoberman, New York Times, 26 Apr. 2018
  • But while playing hooky from school one day at age nine, Brunet came upon people gliding across a sheet of ice and was besotted.
    — Natasha O'Neill, Vanity Fair, 3 Feb. 2026
  • High-school hooky players flitted about looking for the next Instagram moment.
    — Ben Crandell, sun-sentinel.com, 12 Nov. 2021
  • But fans hoping to ditch work to take in Cleveland’s home opener the following week might have just lost their reason to play hooky.
    — Joe Noga, cleveland, 11 Mar. 2022
  • Or just play early-week hooky as sunshine and comfortable conditions return!
    — A. Camden Walker, Washington Post, 4 May 2018
  • But instead of going to work and serving as a voice of his constituents, Charlie decided to play hooky.
    — Susan Ferrechio, Washington Examiner, 28 May 2020
  • Some remote workers are playing hooky from their company’s homebase these days, and bosses are catching on.
    — Chloe Berger, Fortune, 21 Nov. 2022
  • The mischievous Ferris decides to play hooky and ropes in his girlfriend Sloane and best friend Cameron for some fun.
    — Bryan Hood, Robb Report, 21 Feb. 2023
  • This is a joining of forces at a state-of-the-art facility for two doctors who used to play hooky from anatomy lab to play basketball.
    — Jonathan Jones, SI.com, 20 July 2017
  • Pritchard played hooky from high school with a friend to try to find tickets to Game 3 at Maple Leaf Gardens.
    — Laine Higgins, WSJ, 17 May 2021
  • Within a few sessions of playing hooky from his ski jumping and cross country lessons, the 6-year-old had taught himself to do a backflip.
    — The Salt Lake Tribune, 14 Feb. 2022
  • On vocals, Jones alternates between hooky crooning and spazzy yelping.
    — Peter Margasak, Chicago Reader, 20 July 2017
  • Baby’s hooky, introspective and deeply Southern hip-hop has become a defining sound of the year in lockdown.
    — Los Angeles Times, 7 Dec. 2020
  • Mike Williams, playing hooky lately, showed up for class with three quick catches and then the 53-yarder to put his side up after blowing the lead.
    — Nick Canepa Columnist, San Diego Union-Tribune, 21 Nov. 2021
  • Waugh walks around with a newfound swagger, playing hooky, drinking heavily, even seducing a woman at his local.
    — Dan Piepenbring, Harpers Magazine, 24 Feb. 2026

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'hooky.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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