hocus and pocus

plural hocuses and pocuses

1. alternativeuncountableusuallyAlternative form of hocus-pocus.

   I guess Sunday night taught us that religions and footballs have their hocuses and pocuses, too.

   1988 December 10, Walter J. Rittle, “Religion, Football”, in The Daily News, number 93, Lebanon, Pa., page 6, column 6

   2 more examples

   “I’ve got an idea if we go up the mountain and pick some of the Hocus and Pocus plant which cures toothache instantly, we might give it to our little friends to take him, and the chances are he would be so pleased at having his pain cured that he would do anything for them.”[…]and then Sapphire said that they must look carefully amongst the grass, for it was in that field that the Hocus and Pocus plant grew; and sure enough, they had hardly walked a quarter of the way across when Mince Pie and Barley Sugar called out that they had found a beautiful plant of it.

   1882, Golden Curl, and Other Fairy Stories, pages 100 and 102

   Engineer Bill Maylone lists the microphones he used—Schoeps MK21, Neumann KM 140, and AKG C414—keeping alive the nearly forgotten custom of giving the listener an insight into one area of the recording art that is still immune from all the hocus and pocus of digitization.

   1994, Fanfare, page 454

present singular third person hocuses and pocuses · present singular third person hocusses and pocusses · participle present hocusing and pocusing · participle present hocussing and pocussing · participle past hocused and pocused · past hocused and pocused · participle past hocussed and pocussed · past hocussed and pocussed

1. alternativeAlternative form of hocus-pocus.

   Your attention is presently focused / On a grasshopping red-legged locust. / If threatened or chased, / He will vanish post haste, / Just as if he had hocused and pocused.

   1966 August 7, Richard Haun, “Haunimals”, in Democrat and Chronicle, Rochester, N.Y., page 2M, column 5

   5 more examples

   Says she, “My dear Cindy, you shan’t at home stop / While they sport their toes at a twopenny hop; / You shall have coach and horses, and shut up the shop, / And wed perhaps to a very fine fellow.” / So she hocussed and pocussed the coach and the pair, / The footman, the coachman, and all else were there, / With a bran span new barber to curl up her hair— / A regular swell Cinderella.

   1873, “Cinderella”, in Trade Truths and Fireside Fancies. Selected from the Miscellaneous Writings of Benjamin Andrade., London: […] W. H. & L. Collingridge, […] , page 122

   Thebaic tincture gtts. vi / Gum ammoniacum O / Sig: One scruple q 4 hours // The beautiful thing about that prescription was that it was harmless. Many wrote prescriptions like that only for show, just Hocusing and Pocusing.

   1938, Annals of Medical History, page 345, column 2

   As the dean of the league’s managers, Earl Weaver also has acted as a magician at times, hocusing and pocusing the Orioles into races they really shouldn’t have been in. This season he may have to pull another trick.

   1982 April 4, New York Times News Service, “East: Brewers may make it now”, in Sunday Herald-Leader, number 14, Lexington, Ky., section “Baltimore”, page D5, column 1

   Ivy yearned to be grown up. When you were a child, you did what they wanted. Willy-nilly. Helter-skelter. Pell and mell. You were hocussed and pocussed from one place to another with no say about it at all. You could have friends where you were, like the school you were going to, the apartment you lived in where you and your sister had a bedroom together and Francis one of his own. You could lose all that when they decided you would.

   1986, Mary Stolz, Ivy Larkin, published 1989, →ISBN, page 19

   A few moments later that malodorous mist tore apart like the shreds of an old shirt and drifted away on a cool night breeze. The moon shone down once more upon the waters of the Lake. / ‘You see,’ Haroun told his father, ‘it wasn’t only a story, after all.’ / Rashid actually laughed out loud in delight. ‘You’re a blinking good man in a tight spot, Haroun Khalifa,’ he said with an emphatic nod. ‘Hats off to you.’ / ‘Gullible Mr Rashid,’ cried Snooty Buttoo, ‘surely you don’t believe the lad’s hocusing and pocusing? Freak weather conditions came, and then went. No more to be said.’

   1990, Salman Rushdie, “The Dull Lake”, in Haroun and the Sea of Stories, published 2000, →ISBN