English Dictionary

hocus

/ˈhəʊkəs/

verb

To play a trick on, to trick (someone); to hoax; to cheat. / (obsolete) To stupefy (someone) with drugged liquor (especially in order to steal from them). / (obsolete) To drug (liquor).

He likes to hocus his friends by pretending to be a mind reader.

意味（1）

To play a trick on, to trick (someone); to hoax; to cheat.

[…] to contemplate the miseries of a poor Poetick life, or study some well laid plot to Hocus his Landlady into a further credence or belief […]

意味（2）

(obsolete) To stupefy (someone) with drugged liquor (especially in order to steal from them).

[…] but him they intended to disable by a trick then newly introduced amongst robbers, and termed hocussing, i. e., clandestinely drugging the liquor of the victim with laudanum […]

意味（3）

(obsolete) To drug (liquor).

[…] I think the wine of them two Governors was—I will not say a hocussed wine, but fur from a wine as was elthy for the mind.

意味（4）

(obsolete) To adulterate (food).

I had a healthy appetite, but the tradition was that all the food was unutterably bad, adulterated, hocussed.