hook: [OE] Hook and its Germanic relatives, German haken, Dutch haak, Swedish hake, and Danish hage, go back to a prehistoric *keg- or *keng- ‘bent object’, from which English also gets hank [14] (via Old Norse *hanku). Old Norse haki ‘hook’ was the source of a now obsolete English hake ‘hook’, which may have been the inspiration for the fish-name hake [15] (the hake having a hook-shaped lower jaw). Hookah ‘water-pipe’ [18], incidentally, has no etymological connection with hook; it comes via Urdu from Arabic huqqah ‘small box’. => hake, hank
hook (n.)
Old English hoc "hook, angle," perhaps related to Old English haca "bolt," from Proto-Germanic *hokaz/*hakan (cognates: Old Frisian hok, Middle Dutch hoek, Dutch haak, German Haken "hook"), from PIE *keg- "hook, tooth" (cognates: Russian kogot "claw"). For spelling, see hood (n.1).
Boxing sense of "short, swinging blow with the elbow bent" is from 1898. Figurative sense was in Middle English (see hooker). By hook or by crook (late 14c.) probably alludes to tools of professional thieves. Hook, line, and sinker "completely" is 1838, a metaphor from angling.
hook (v.)
"to bend like a hook," c. 1200; see hook (n.). Meaning "to catch (a fish) with a hook" is from c. 1300. Related: Hooked; hooking.
