to play hookie (truant)

badgrammar

badgrammar

Senior Member
American English
How do you say "playing hookie" in your language? That means not going to school (also: "cutting classes").

In French it is "sécher les cours", I believe.
 
    • In Portuguese (Brazil at least) enforcar/matar aula, slightly old-fashioned cabular aula and very old-fashioned gazetear.
     
    Sorry, I should have asked in my first post, but can you give us a literal translation of the sayings as well?

    In French "Sécher les cours" is literally "to dry/cut classes", I guess "sécher" here would be understood as "to cut" in this context.

    In English "Playing hookie/hookey" would seem related to 19th century expressions like "By hook or by crook", so it is something crooked or underhanded...
     
    In Portuguese (Brazil at least) enforcar/matar aula, slightly old-fashioned cabular aula and very old-fashioned gazetear.
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    Enforcar aula - to hang (as a criminal)/to string up class
    Matar aula - to kill class
    Cabular/gazetear - to shrink from something

    Funny that my dictionary doesn't have cabular as a transitive verb :confused: , only as intransitive, but I've never heard cabular intransitively in this sense.
     
    Czech: Chodit za školu. = To go behind the school. :)
    Záškolák - behind-the-schooler. :D

    Jana
     
    Italian: marinare la scuola o tagliare (but there's a different translation for every dialect: fare schisa in Piedmontese, fa' filone in Neapolitan and so on...)
     
    Firstly, here in the UK we always say either "skive (off)" or "bunk off". I had never heard of "playing hookie" before this thread! The formal terms used by teaching staff are "playing truant" and "absconding from school", which would both sound quite out of place in an informal situation!

    The most standard translation in Spanish is "hacer novillos" but according to my dictionary of colloquialisms there are other ways of saying it such as:
    "irse de pinta" in Mexico
    "hacerse la rata/la rabona" in Argentina and Uruguay
    "hacerse la vaca" in Peru
    "hacer la cimarra" in Chile
    "capar clase" in Colombia

    NB: I can only assume the regional varieties are correct, I've never heard them.
     
    linguist786 said:
    We used to say "blaumachen" when we were at school. Was ist deiner Meinung dazu?
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    Have you ever been in a German school (and did you need to blaumachen there)? :D

    Well, yes, the word can be used in German, but it sounds quite old-fashioned. Its translation is "to make blue."

    To describe the meaning of word "schwänzen" (which is much more common nowadays), a very thorough explanation is required. It is akin to "Schwanz" (tail), and was first actively used in Rotwelsch (schwentzen) in the 18th century as a word for "to loiter (crime not necessarily implied)/hang around," and Luther used it for "to strut." These days, it is used as an equivalent of "to play hookie."
     
    avalon2004 said:
    Firstly, here in the UK we always say either "skive (off)" or "bunk off". I had never heard of "playing hookie" before this thread! The formal terms used by teaching staff are "playing truant" and "absconding from school", which would both sound quite out of place in an informal situation!

    The most standard translation in Spanish is "hacer novillos" but according to my dictionary of colloquialisms there are other ways of saying it such as:
    "irse de pinta" in Mexico
    "hacerse la rata/la rabona" in Argentina and Uruguay
    "hacerse la vaca" in Peru
    "hacer la cimarra" in Chile
    "capar clase" in Colombia

    NB: I can only assume the regional varieties are correct, I've never heard them.
    Click to expand...
    Funny the difference in BE/AE here, I'd never heard of "skive/bunk off" for that, even "absconding from school" would be over the heads of many Americans :).

    Out of curiosity, what do the Spanish version translate to literally

    Whodunit, I was curious about the origin of scwänzen, but I was too shy to ask;)!

    Thanks all for your answers so far!
     
    Come to think of it, we also use the term "to skip school" in England.

    Another term used in Chile is "hacer la chancha", which translates into English as "to do/make the (female) pig" strangely enough!!

    The other phrases really do not translate literally at all:

    Hacer novillos     = "to do/make young bulls"
    Irse de pinta = there is just no way to translate this! "to go off on appearance"???
    Hacerse la rata/rabona/vaca = "to become the rat/camp-follower(??)/cow"
    Hacer la cimarra = there is literally no translation, "la cimarra" does not have any meaning on its own that I know of.
    Capar clase = "to castrate(!) class"

    They sound ridiculous I know, but if anyone else feels they can be translated literally then please try!
     
    Hi,

    In Dutch:
    spijbelen (1762, origins unknown)
    brossen (marked in the dico as Belgian Dutch). Brossen comes from Wallonian 'brosser', 'to walk in the woods, but not on the paths'.

    Groetjes,

    Frank
     
    I wanted to start this thread, but I am late. What I miss here, are some explanations of words or phrases. If anyone feels like explaining the Turkish expression, the Finnish, etc., please do !

    Now I thought I had not read about the English word playing truant/truancy here, but I did come across it later on; it refers to beggars, vagabonds, etymonline.org tells us,

    The Dutch spijbelen is supposed to refer to a bum, but no further reference can be found. I have also heard of haagschool doen, lit. to play hedgeschool, which I'd associate with hiding - and the English absconding, maybe the 'skiving'/ 'bunking' off.
     
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    spakh said:
    In Turkish
    1. okulu kırmak
    2. okulu asmak
    3. okuldan kaçmak
    What we always do.;)
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    1. okulu kırmak literally means "to break/shatter the school".
    2. okulu asmak also dersi asmak literally mean "to hang the school" or "to hang the class".

    3. okuldan kaçmak is a bit different. It litterally means "to run away from the school", and it means, to attend the first two or three classes, and then leave the school to hang out with friends or maybe in order to attend the classes at the private institutes (called: Dershane).
     
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    ThomasK said:
    I wanted to start this thread, but I am late. What I miss here, are some explanations of words or phrases. If anyone feels like explaining the Turkish expression, the Finnish, etc., please do !
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    The Finnish pinnata has been borrowed from Swedish. The modern meaning was born in soldier slang in the 1920s.

    pinna - to pin up [on the wall], to tighten -> to [com]press, to steal, to cheat -> escaping duties

    Source: Häkkinen, Kaisa: Nykysuomen etymologinen sanakirja (2004), p. 926

    No explanations for lintsata. I also agree that the latter is by far the most common.
     
    magyar

    the formal expression is: iskolát kerül [iskola school, iskolát accusative + kerül go round]
    the most common, slang: lóg [literally: to hang]

    Slovene

    špricati [form the German spritzen, i.e to spray]

    Polish: chodzić na wagary, wagarować [form Latin vagor, vagus, i.e. to wander, to roam]

    Russian: динамить [interesting etymology, < dynamo] [can you teach me how to mark the stress on the Cyrillic keyboard?]
     
    avalon2004 said:
    In Greek the set expression is κάνω κοπάνα [káno kopána] which literally means "to do truancy".
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    Previous generations would say «κάνω σκασιαρχείο» ['kano skasiar'çi.o] («σκασιαρχείο» [skasiar'çi.o] (neut. noun): v. «σκά(ζ)ω» ['ska(z)o] < Classical «σχάζω» 'sxắzō --> lit. to slit open, in MG, to burst, let go, flee + v. «ἄρχω» ắrxō --> to rule, be leader of), while in army slang it's «παίρνω άδεια απ'τη σημαία» ['perno 'aði.a apti si'me.a] --> to take leave from the flag (instead of following army regulations and procedures)
     
    In Filipino, we'd often use "tumakas sa klase", literally to escape from class. :)
    The Japanese have saboru サボる but I don't know the origin of that or why the first 2 Kana are written in Katakana.
     
    In Aberdeen (Scotland) we used the word 'plunk' for truant. It was said to have come, as many north-east Scots words do, from sea-trading with the Netherlands and was a corruption of their word 'plenken' meaning to play truant. Perhaps a Dutch speaker could help.
     
    In Catalan we say fer campana ("to do bell"). In Western Catalonia I've heard they say fer pila ("to do pile, or battery" (?)), and in Valencia fer fugina (probably related to fugir "to flee, escape").
     
    Dymn said:
    In Catalan we say fer campana ("to do bell"). In Western Catalonia I've heard they say fer pila ("to do pile, or battery" (?)), and in Valencia fer fugina (probably related to fugir "to flee, escape").
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    In Aragonese there is also fer fuina (or fuineta), and while it can also be related to fu(y)ir, the fuina is also an animal (fagina or fuïna too in Catalan, 'beech marten' in English), so it might be related to tbis, like saying 'to do as a marten'.
     
    robbie_SWE said:
    In Swedish it's "att skolka".

    :) robbie
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    Skolka means to stay hidden/hide away. It's related to the English word
    skulk with the same mean meaning, which seems to be derived from the Scandinavian word, and which in it's turn is derived from an old German word.
     
    In American English 'play hooky' sounds old-fashioned to me. It's apparently also spelled hookey and hookie, but hooky looks "right" to me (but that's just me).

    'Skip school,' 'cut classes,' and 'ditch school' are what I've heard more recently (where 'recently' = 20 years ago).
     
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