Word.ws English Dictionary

in hock

in hock prepositional phrase: having been pawned.

Prepositional phrase

  1. Having been pawned.
    • Her necklace is in hock in order to cover some family expenses.
  2. (broadly, figuratively) Indebted.
    • The wind doesn’t stop blowing because an autocrat has a tantrum; harnessing the solar radiation that bathes our world doesn’t leave us in hock to the House of Saud.2022 June 5, Ezra Klein, “Your Kids Are Not Doomed”, in The New York Times
    • As economist Paul Johnson said: “The sad truth is we are in hock to the bond markets … We are already paying many billions more in debt interest than we would be if markets were charging us the same as they are charging other countries.2026 June 22, Tom Clark, quoting Paul Johnson, “The ungovernable country? Why Britain keeps losing prime ministers”, in The Guardian, →ISSN

Origin of in hock

From Dutch hok (“hutch, hovel, jail, pen, doghouse”).

Words formed from in hock

Questions about in hock

What does in hock mean?
In hock means having been pawned.
What part of speech is in hock?
In hock is a prepositional phrase.

Words near in hock in the dictionary

  1. in hiding
  2. in high dudgeon
  3. in high feather
  4. in high gear
  5. in hindsight
  6. in hock
  7. in honor of
  8. in honour of
  9. in hospital
  10. in hot pursuit
  11. in house

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: in hock (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “in hock.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/in_hock. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.