Word.ws English Dictionary

playing hooky

playing hooky is the present participle and gerund 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 playing hooky

What is playing hooky the present participle and gerund of?
Playing hooky is the present participle and gerund of play hooky.

Words near playing hooky in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: playing 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: “playing hooky.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/playing_hooky. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.