h • Conjuring "[I]f it's hocus, it's clever hocus indeed. . . . You must admit that it smacks rather of clairvoyance, or the cleverer sort of conjuring trick." -- Michael Kurland, Death by Gaslight (1982) • Illness "Many of us have fallen to hocus and some have already passed on." -- C.S. Haviland, Faith & Fairies (2005) • Magician "I say, old hocus, have you such a thing / About you, -- feel your pockets, I command. -- / I want this instant, an invisible ring." -- John Keats, "The Cap and Bells," The Mask of Keats: The Endeavour of a Poet (2000) • Sham "'They're going middle-class respectable, and it embarrasses the hell out of them when you get drunk and tell people about panhandling in New Or leans or that hocus wedding in Texas.' 'It wasn't hocus.'" -- Tim Sandlin, Sex and Sunsets (1987) • Spike "'The night afore the last day o' the last election here, the opposite party bribed the bar-maid at the Town Arms, to hocus the brandy and water of fourteen unpolled electors as was a stoppin' in the house.' 'What do you mean by 'hocussing' brandy and water?' 'Puttin' laud'num in it,' replied Sam." -- Charles Dickins, Pickwick Papers (18 7) • Trick, deceive "I thought maybe you was trying to hocus me again." -- Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (188 ) • Unintelligible -- Allan H. Meltzer, Keynes's Monetary Theory (1989) • Unscientific "I did not understand that valuable artifacts would be removed entirely from my own care to be subjected to some experimental hocus voodoo by an amateur." -- Elizabeth Ann Scarborough, Channeling Cleopatra (2002) • Voodoo, superstition; nonsense, poppycock "Hocus. I've seen what she does. Herb tea and a couple of joss sticks." -- Graham Joyce, Dark Sister (1999) In Literature: • Poet William Carlos Williams described Carl Sandburg as a writer "of excellent hocus." -- Paul L. Mariani, William Carlos Williams: A New World Naked (1981) • "[I]f I hocus you, why you hocus me in return; so it isn't so very unfair, you know." -- Anthony Trollope, Orley Farm (1860) • "Frankly, sir, the exercise strikes me as pure hocus!" -- Michael Kurland, Death by Gaslight (1982)