Hook, Hooks.
He is off the hooks. Done for, laid on the shelf, superseded, dead. The bent pieces of iron on which the hinges of a gate rest and turn are called hooks; if a gate is off the hooks it is in a bad way, and cannot readily be opened and shut.
On one’s own hook. On one’s own responsibility or account. An angler’s phrase.
To fish with a golden hook. To give bribes. “Pêcher avec un hameçon dʹor.” Risk a sprat to catch a mackerel. To buy fish, and pretend to have caught it.
With a hook at the end. My assent is given with a hook at the end means not intended to be kept. In some parts of Germany, even to the present day, when a witness swears falsely, he crooks one finger into a sort of hook, and this is supposed sufficient to avert the sin of perjury. It is a crooked oath, or an oath “with a hook at the end.” (See Over the Left.)
