hocuses

Verb

hocus (third-person singular simple present hocuses or hocusses, present participle hocusing or hocussing, simple past and past participle hocused or hocussed)

1. To play a trick on, to trick (someone); to hoax; to cheat.
   • […] to contemplate the miseries of a poor Poetick life, or study some well laid plot to Hocus his Landlady into a further credence or belief […]1677, Poor Robin’s Visions, London: Arthur Boldero, Eighth Vision, p. 117
2. (obsolete) To stupefy (someone) with drugged liquor (especially in order to steal from them).
   • […] but him they intended to disable by a trick then newly introduced amongst robbers, and termed hocussing, i. e., clandestinely drugging the liquor of the victim with laudanum […]1855, Thomas De Quincey, “Three Memorable Murders: A Sequel to ‘Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts’”, in The Note Book of an English Opium-Eater, Boston: Ticknor & Fields, page 65
3. (obsolete) To drug (liquor).
   • […] I think the wine of them two Governors was—I will not say a hocussed wine, but fur from a wine as was elthy for the mind.1864 May – 1865 November, Charles Dickens, chapter 12, in Our Mutual Friend. […], volume I, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1865, →OCLC
4. (obsolete) To adulterate (food).
   • I had a healthy appetite, but the tradition was that all the food was unutterably bad, adulterated, hocussed.1915, Arthur Christopher Benson, “Schooldays”, in Escape and Other Essays, London: Smith, Elder, pages 197–198

See all 8 meanings of hocus