Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (also hokey) nonsense, flattery, lying.

1908		K. McGaffey Sorrows of a Show Girl Ch. xviii: Honest, to hear him spring that sure-fire hokum you would have thought he believed it.
1916		Eve. Public Ledger (Phila., PA) 3 Oct. 11/1: The chatter and the crown and everything else proved to be very much hokum last night at the Olympia.
1920		Ade Hand-made Fables 218: It was up to him to pull something besides the sure-fire Hokum about a brilliant Career.
1932		(con. 1910s) J.T. Farrell Young Lonigan in Studs Lonigan (1936) 28: This talk of spirits was a lot of hokum.
1943		J.A. Kirch ‘March of the Damned’ in Ten Detective Aces Mar. 🌐 ‘Hokum,’ I said flatly. [Ibid.] Hokum? Sure, but beautiful hokum.
1945		E. Wilson 23 Feb. [synd. col.] All the hokey you write about your Beautiful Wife.
1953		W. Fisher Waiters 272: Babes, you’re too smart to fall for that hokum.
1967		W. Manus Mott the Hoople 129: It’s composed of equal parts of anti-Communism, evangelism, and good old fashioned American hokum.
1971		D. Wells Night People 36: There wasn’t much hokum with bands of that kind [...] The audiences were real hip.
1999		K. Sampson Powder 54: You’re trying to convince yourself it’s fair, but in your own heart you must know it’s hokum.
2000		Guardian 10 Jan. 20: I know exactly what it is [...] It’s hokum.

2. (orig. theatre) sentimental or melodramatic speechifying or ‘business’.

1906		Eve. World (NY) 3 Mar. 9/4: I’ve been studying plays that make hits and I’m going to write one myelf that won’t be nothing but sure-fire hokum from start to finish.
1915		N.Y. Times X2/5–6: The big laughs for jasbo, hokum, and gravy, as we call broad humor, frequently come from the women patrons in the house where it is performed.
1928		J. Callahan Man’s Grim Justice 142: I couldn’t see the ham in her [...] I fell for the stardom hokum.
1930		E. Glyn Flirt and Flapper 87: Flapper: We’ve no time for hokum [...] Sentiment.
1939		in Scribner’s Mag. 260: [...] the ancient hokum of ‘Abie’s Irish Rose’.
1949		Wodehouse Mating Season 92: Hokum, yes, but [...] good theatre.
1952		Lait & Mortimer USA Confidential 152: It is the hokum-happy haven for psychopaths and confidence-workers of every stripe and degree.
1963		H.S. Thompson letter 9 Sept. in Proud Highway (1997) 396: All writing the same stale hokum.
1993		R. Firestone Swing, Swing, Swing 156: [W]hile [. . .] Riley and Farley were accomplished jazz musicians, it was their flair for [...] show business hokum that captured the public’s attention.