hockey stick

plural hockey sticks

1. CanadaUShobbiesA stick used to handle the puck in ice hockey, having a flat, angled blade at the end.
2. UKfield hockeyA stick used to handle the ball in field hockey, having a flat-faced hook at the end.

   The game itself, though played by men, was probably meant to enact a mediation of the opposites of male and female, with a circular puck being the feminine symbol and the phallic hockey stick being the masculine symbol.

   1981, William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture, London: Rider/Hutchinson & Co., page 184

3. card gamesA playing card with the rank of seven.
4. informalmathematicsA statistical trend in a graph of survey data in which most of the results are flat and then the graph suddenly peaks in a steep near-vertical direction.

   “That said, we continue to remain cautious of pie-in-the-sky forecasts that see this hockey stick continuing indefinitely,” Nathanson added[…].

   2024 April 18, Callum Jones, quoting Michael Nathanson, “Netflix profits surge as streaming service adds 9.3m subscribers in latest quarter”, in The Guardian, →ISSN

   2 more examples

   One of the pillars of the case for man-made global warming is a graph nicknamed the hockey stick. It's a reconstruction of temperatures over the past 1,000 years based on records captured in tree rings, corals and other markers. The stick's shaft shows temperatures oscillating slightly over the ages. Then comes the blade: The mercury swings sharply upward in the 20th century.

   2005 February 14, Antonio Regalado, “In Climate Debate, The 'Hockey Stick' Leads to a Face-Off”, in Wall Street Journal, →ISSN

   They made it the focus of their attacks, hoping that by demolishing the hockey stick graph they would destroy the credibility of climate scientists and the notion of global warming as a phenomenon caused by human activity.

   2006 March 15, Fred Pearce, “Climate: The great hockey stick debate”, in New Scientist