Etymology: Known from 14th cent. as hoȝ , houȝ . In Scotland still pronounced /hɔx/; plural also /hɔʊz/; in some parts of England the local pronunciation appears to be /hɒf/, /hʌf/, /haʊ/, or /həʊ/. The now usual /hɒk/ appears to be an anglicizing of hoch /hox/: compare loch , lough , shough . Its general prevalence appears to have given origin to the parallel spelling hock : see hock n.² Evidently identical with Old English hóh , ho n.¹, ‘heel’; as to difficulties of sense and phonology see note below.Note . Old English hóh (ho n.¹) has been noted only in the sense ‘(human) heel’, which does not at all correspond to 2 above. But the Old English compound hóhsinu , hough-sinew n., used of horses, implies that hóh was also the hough or hock of a horse, as in sense 1 above. From the latter, 2 may have been transferred after the Old English sense ‘heel’ was obsolete and forgotten; the hough of a horse being in position analogous to the knee of man, and often popularly called the ‘hind-knee’. As to the phonology, Old English hóh would regularly give Sc. heuch , heugh n. /hʏx/, as in eneuch , teuch , pleuch , etc., while Sc. hoch , howch /hɔx/ goes back to a form with short o , as in cough , trough , thocht , etc. The words can then be identical only if the ō in Old English hóh was shortened early enough to give howch , and not heuch , in Sc. The only apparent solution of this is that, as the compound hóhsinu (hough-sinew n.) was evidently shortened to hohsin, hoxen, hockshin, huckson, huxen (ó before the consonant-group becoming o), this reacted in some way upon the simple word, so as to give early Middle English hoh, hoȝ, hogh, with short o, whence in later times Sc. hoch, English hock. Perhaps the compound, with its derived verb, was in more general use than the simple word.

Etymology: < hough n.: compare also hock v.¹, hox v.

Etymology: Echoic.

Etymology: Variant of ho int.¹