Hokey cokey

The hokey cokey (United Kingdom), New Zealand, or hokey pokey (United States, Canada, Ireland, Australia, the Caribbean, ((Mexico))) is a participation dance with a distinctive accompanying tune and lyric structure. It is well known in English-speaking countries. It originates in a British folk dance, with variants attested as early as 1826. The song and accompanying dance peaked in popularity as a music hall song and novelty dance in the mid-1940s in Britain and Ireland. Then song was a chart hit twice in the 1980s - first by Snowmen which peaked at UK #18 in 1981, and then Black Lace who reached #31 in 1985.

Origins and meaning

Despite several claims of a recent invention, numerous variants of the song exist going back centuries. Some scholars found similar dances and lyrics dating back to the 17th century. One of the earlier variants, with a very similar dance to the modern one, is found in Robert Chambers' Popular Rhymes of Scotland from 1826; the words there are given as:

Hokey pokey (disambiguation)

The Hokey cokey (UK) or hokey pokey (U.S.) is a dance and song.

Hokey pokey or hokey cokey may refer to:

Dance and music

Food

See also

Hokey pokey (ice cream)

Hokey pokey is a flavour of ice cream in New Zealand, consisting of plain vanilla ice cream with small, solid lumps of honeycomb toffee. Hokey pokey is the New Zealand term for honeycomb toffee. The original recipe until around 1980 consisted of solid toffee, but in a marketing change Tip-Top decided to use small balls of honeycomb toffee instead.

It is the most popular flavour after plain vanilla in New Zealand, and a standard example of Kiwiana. It is also exported to Japan and the Pacific.

Etymology

"Hokey pokey" was a slang term for ice cream in general in the 19th and early 20th centuries in several areas — including New York and parts of Great Britain — specifically for the ice cream sold by street vendors, or "hokey-pokey" men. The vendors, said to be mostly of Italian descent, supposedly used a sales pitch or song involving the phrase "hokey pokey", for which several origins have been suggested, although no certain etymology is known.

The name may come from the term "hocus-pocus", or it may be a corruption of one of several Italian phrases. According to "The Encyclopedia of Food" (published 1923, New York) hokey pokey (in the U.S.) is "a term applied to mixed colors and flavors of ice cream in cake form". The Encyclopedia says the term originated from the Italian phrase oh che poco - "oh how little". Alternative possible derivations include other similar-sounding Italian phrases: for example ecco un poco - "here is a (little) piece".