hickey

Etymology

The origin is unknown.^{[2][3][4][5][6][7]} Green's Dictionary of Slang takes the "gadget" sense as a shortening of doohickey, and the "bruise, pimple, love bite" sense perhaps likewise,^[8] but Etymonline and the OED take doohickey (1914) as formed from hickey itself.^[9][2] Merriam-Webster enters the gadget and the blemish senses as two homographs, both of unknown origin,^[3] and Dictionary.com thinks the blemish senses perhaps of separate origin, though it allows a development from a device to a defective one and then to a defect or mark,^[10] and Etymonline thinks the love bite perhaps an extension of the gadget sense.^[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

A small gadget or device, or something whose name is unknown: Green's Dictionary of Slang has an American record from 1903, in Ade's People You Know, of an unknown person,^[8] and the OED's first record is the 1909 Webster's New International Dictionary.^[2][9] Dictionary.com dates the word to 1905–10, as an Americanism.^[10]

Semantic evolution

In American English the word was first a name for any small device whose proper name one did not know, then for specific tools: a pipe-bending device and an electrical fitting, recorded in regional use from 1919.^[11][2][3] By 1917 it also meant a bruise or bump, and by 1918 a pimple;^[8][3][9] the sense "love bite", a red mark made by sucking or biting the skin, is dated 1934 by Etymonline and the OED.^[9][2][8] Printers used it from 1940 for a spot on a negative, proof or printed sheet caused by dirt or a flaw on the plate.^[2][12] In New Zealand slang it is a word for a thingamajig.^[8]

Timeline

• 1903 – an unnamed thing or person, in Green's Dictionary of Slang.^[8] The OED dates the gadget sense to 1909.^[2][9]
• 1917 – a bruise or bump.^[8]
• 1918 – a pimple.^[8][3]
• 1919 – a pipe-bending device.^[11]
• 1934 – a love bite.^[9][2]
• 1940 – in printing, a spot on a proof or printed sheet.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. (informal) A gadget or device whose name one does not know or has forgotten; a doohickey.^[12][3][2]
2. (informal) A red mark on the skin left by biting or sucking in lovemaking; a love bite.^[12][3][2]
3. (informal) A pimple.^[3][2]
4. (printing) A spot on a printed sheet or plate caused by dirt or a flaw.^[12][3][2]
5. A threaded coupling for fixing an electric fixture to an outlet box, or a tool for bending pipe or conduit.^[3][11]

Word family

• doohickey

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
4. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
5. ^ Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ Soanes, Catherine; Stevenson, Angus, eds. (2004), Concise Oxford English Dictionary, 11th ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ a b c d e f g h Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com
9. ^ a b c d e f g Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
10. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
11. ^ a b c Cassidy, Frederic G. & Joan Houston Hall (eds.) (1985–2002), Dictionary of American Regional English, vols I–IV, Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press
12. ^ a b c d Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins