Green’s Dictionary of Slang

hookem-snivey adj.

deceitful, tricky.

1841		R. Barham Some account of my cousin Nicholas, by Thomas Ingoldsby 293: He felt, as he subsequently declared, in his own peculiar phraseology, ‘all hookem snivey, and no mistake.’.
1905		E. Phillpotts Knock at a Venture 310: Can’t be no hookem-snivey doings under darkness wi’ such a man as Cap’n Bluett amongst us.
1913		E. Phillpotts Old Time Before Them 157: But his hookem-snivey brains was hatching out something all the while.
1938		Atlantic Monthly 161 632/2: I asked a Dutchman [...] whether their jobholders ever cut up any such hookem-snivey capers with public money as ours do. He replied no, . . if a jobholder tried to get away with any pawky bookkeeping, he would be likely to hear about it.
1939		(ref. to 1890s) AS XIV 22: [Letter:] Are you acquainted with the extraordinary word hookumsnivy, signifying ‘mean’ or ‘small’? My Quaker grandmother, born in Maryland in 1823, used it in my hearing when she was about seventy years old. She said that it was a barbarism in use among common people and that we must forget it.