Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. swindling and other illicit activities.

1899		‘Pot’ & ‘Swears’ Scarlet City 56: How she’ll swear when she hears of this little bit of hokey-pokey.
1937–84		Partridge DSUE (1984) 559: from ca. 1845.
1953		R. Dahl Someone Like You 312: ‘A good respectable job is all a man should wish for. [...] Too much hokey-pokey in business for my liking’.

2. nonsense.

1937–84		Partridge DSUE (1984) 559: from ca. 1875.
1948		J.M. Cain Moth (1950) 321: I tell you that’s all hokey-pokey.
1981		G. Tate ‘Knee Deep in Blood Ulmer’ in Flyboy in the Buttermilk (1992) 18: When Blood goes vocal the bottom drops out like a stumblebum and the bridges take it to the hokey-pokey.

3. an unspecified object.

1944

J. Cary Horse’s Mouth (1948) 171: You tell the tale and I make the hokey pokey, works by the celebrated Gulley Jimson.