Word.ws English Dictionary

play hookey

play hookey is the alternative spelling of play hooky.

Meaning of play hooky

Verb

play hooky (third-person singular simple present plays hooky, present participle playing hooky, simple past and past participle played hooky)

  1. (US, idiomatic) To play truant; to avoid (informally: skip) school, work, or other duties (stay away from these without permission nor an excuse); to skive or to bunk off (UK);
    • Plenty of people played hooky from work to go see the movie on opening day.
    Synonyms:
    play truant

Forms of play hookey

third-person singular presentplays hookey
present participleplaying hookey
past participleplayed hookey
pastplayed hookey

Questions about play hookey

What is play hookey the alternative spelling of?
Play hookey is the alternative spelling of play hooky.

Words near play hookey in the dictionary

  1. play hard to get
  2. play hardball
  3. play havoc
  4. play hell with
  5. play hob with
  6. play hookey
  7. play hookie
  8. play hooky
  9. play host to
  10. play house
  11. play houses

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: play hookey (page history and authors); play hooky (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-play hookey.wav.

Cite this entry: “play hookey.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/play_hookey. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.