hookshop
Hookshop is dated British slang for a brothel, framing the establishment as a place where 'hooks' (prostitutes, in older slang) ply their trade.
Definitions
Hookshop is dated British slang for a brothel, framing the establishment as a place where 'hooks' (prostitutes, in older slang) ply their trade. The term belongs to 19th and early 20th century vice vocabulary, encountered in social reform literature, police records, and period slang dictionaries. Entirely obsolete in contemporary usage. Like many Victorian brothel euphemisms, it uses an indirect commercial metaphor — a shop where a particular commodity is available — to describe the trade.
The reformers campaigned to close every hookshop in the district and convert the buildings to charitable use.
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(slang, dated) A brothel.
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- hockshop74%
(US, rare) A pawnshop.
- hockshop72%
An informal American term for a pawnshop — the kind of place where you trade your guitar, old jewelry, or gaming console for quick cash, hoping to buy it back later (you usually don't). While "pawnshop" is the dominant term today, "hockshop" has a grittier, older-school ring to it that fits blues lyrics and hardboiled fiction perfectly. To "hock" something is to pawn it, and the shop where that transaction goes down is the hockshop.
- hush shop70%
(UK, slang, archaic) A shop that illicitly sells alcoholic drinks without a licence.
- kip-shop68%
(slang, dated) A brothel.