Word.ws English Dictionary

played hooky

played hooky is the simple past and past participle 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

Questions about played hooky

What is played hooky the simple past and past participle of?
Played hooky is the simple past and past participle of play hooky.

Words near played hooky in the dictionary

  1. played gooseberry
  2. played hardball
  3. played havoc
  4. played hell with
  5. played hob with
  6. played hooky
  7. played host to
  8. played house
  9. played in
  10. played in Peoria
  11. played into someone's hand

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: played hooky (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.

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