Word.ws English Dictionary

play hooky

play hooky verb: 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);.

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.
    • Next time you play hooky, you might want to take off your school uniform.2007 September 28, John O'Bryan, “The Headband” (5:38 from the start), in Joaquim Dos Santos, director, Avatar: The Last Airbender, season 3 (Book Three: Fire), episode 2
    Synonyms:
    play truant

play hooky meaning in Indonesian, Persian and Thai

play hooky in Indonesian

to stay away from school, work, etc. without suitable permission or excuse
membolos

play hooky in Persian

to stay away from school, work, etc. without suitable permission or excuse
جیم زدن jim zadan

play hooky in Thai

to stay away from school, work, etc. without suitable permission or excuse
โดด dòot

Synonyms of play hooky

Forms of play hooky

third-person singular presentplays hooky
present participleplaying hooky
past participleplayed hooky
pastplayed hooky
alternative formplay hookey
alternative formplay hookie

Origin of play hooky

See hooky for its origin; the construction of the phrase is in the same vein as play truant.

Questions about play hooky

What does play hooky mean?
Play hooky means 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);.
What is play hooky in Indonesian?
Play hooky in Indonesian is membolos. See Play hooky meaning in Indonesian.
What part of speech is play hooky?
Play hooky is a verb.
What is the past tense of play hooky?
The past tense of play hooky is played hooky.

Words near play hooky in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: 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: En-au-play hooky.ogg.

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