hookah

plural hookahs · alternative hooka · alternative hooker · alternative houka · alternative hukka · alternative hukkah · alternative huqqa · alternative huqqah

1. recreational inhalantsA pipe with a long flexible tube that draws the smoke through water, traditionally used for smoking tobacco, which is often flavored.

   But Dubai is resilient, at least when it comes to partying. “Everyone just went back to their hookah and food a minute later,” said Babayan.

   2026 March 3, Alaina Demopoulos, “Dubai influencers’ lives of luxury interrupted by Iran strikes: ‘The image of safety has been shattered’”, in The Guardian, →ISSN

   4 more examples

   In India, the lower orders use a hookah or hubble bubble, which is made of a cocoa-nut shell well cleaned out, having a hole through the soft eye of the shell, and another on the opposite side, a little lower down, the first of which is used for the chauffoir, and the other to suck or draw the smoke from.

   1831, The Mirror of Literature, Amusement and Instruction

   Our new acquaintance very deliberately coiled up the tube of his hookah, and produced from behind a curtain a very long befrogged topcoat with Astrakhan collar and cuffs.

   1890 February, A[rthur] Conan Doyle, “The Story of the Bald-headed Man”, in The Sign of Four (Standard Library), London: Spencer Blackett […], →OCLC, pages 66–67

   The lounge was furnished in old English oak and big Knole settees. There were rugs from Tabriz and Kerman on the highly polished floor. […] A table lamp was fashioned from a silver Egyptian hookah.

   1954, Alexander Alderson, chapter 18, in The Subtle Minotaur

   When Uncle Jack caught me, he kept me laughing about a preacher who hated going to church so much that every day he stood at his gate in his dressing-gown, smoking a hookah and delivering five-minute sermons to any passers-by who desired spiritual comfort.

   1960 July 11, Harper Lee, chapter 9, in To Kill a Mockingbird, Philadelphia, Pa.; New York, N.Y.: J[oshua] B[allinger] Lippincott Company, →OCLC

   Synonyms: hubble-bubble, hubbly bubbly, narghile, shisha

2. divingA tankless surface air compressor pump and umbilical piping system that supplies air to a diving mask.