by hook or by crook

Origin obscure; see by hook or by crook.

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by hook or by crook

1. (idiomatic) By any means possible; one way or another.

   She was determined to win the contract, by hook or by crook.

   • 1794 October 26, George Washington to Alexander Hamilton, in The Writings of George Washington, edited by John C. Fitzpatrick, volume 34 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1940), page 9:

     PS. I hope you will be enabled by Hook, or by Crook, to send B---- and H---- together with a certain Mr. Guthrie, to Philadelphia for their winter Quarters.

   • 1852 March – 1853 September, Charles Dickens, Bleak House, London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1853, →OCLC:

     In these fields of Mr. Tulkinghorn's inhabiting, where the shepherds play on Chancery pipes that have no stop, and keep their sheep in the fold by hook and by crook until they have shorn them exceeding close, […]

   • 1872 September – 1873 July, Thomas Hardy, A Pair of Blue Eyes. […], volumes (please specify |volume=I to III), London: Tinsley Brothers, […], published 1873, →OCLC:

     ‘And, by hook or by crook, Hedger Luxellian was made a lord, and everything went on well till some time after, when he got into a most terrible row with King Charles the Fourth.

   • 1899 February, Joseph Conrad, “The Heart of Darkness”, in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, volume CLXV, number M, New York, N.Y.: The Leonard Scott Publishing Company, […], →OCLC, part I, page 198:

     I wouldn’t have believed it of myself; but, then - you see - I felt somehow I must get there by hook or by crook.

• by hook or by crook on Wikipedia.Wikipedia