Loogie (1985)

[Mullins, Bill AMRDEC]

> >
> > > I've heard "hack a loogie" used as well.  My elementary German
> > > teacher (a young grad student at UMass) would use that
> phrase when
> > > instructing us how to pronounce the final "ch"
> > > sound.  (He was an excellent teacher, by the way.)
> >
> >  And "hock a louie/loogie".  Thus morphing into a "hocker", as in
> > "don't step on that hocker".
>
> "Hock" and "hawk" are, of course, homonymous for speakers
> with the cot/caught merger.
>
>

But the area I grew up in didn't merge these two sounds (at least in
this context);  "hawk" and "hock" were two separate words, and were
pronounced differently.  "Hock" didn't come up in written English that
often, but if it had, I would have written it as I spelled it above.

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