English

Noun

hocket ‎(plural hockets)

1. hiccup
   • 1977, Lloyd Ultan, Music theory: problems and practices in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, U of Minnesota Press, page 91:

     All of these tend to produce something of a hiccough effect we know as hocket and which Reese suggests has a long history dating back to primitive instruments.

2. (music) In medieval music, hocket is the rhythmic linear technique using the alternation of notes, pitches, or chords. A single melody is shared between two (or occasionally more) voices such that alternately one voice sounds while the other rests.
   • 1977, Lloyd Ultan, Music theory: problems and practices in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, U of Minnesota Press, page 91:

     Hocket is a contrapuntal technique described by the early fourteenth-century Walter Odington as "A truncation … made over the tenor … in such a way that one voice is always silent while the other sings."

Derived terms

• hocketing
• hockettor

References

• “hocket”, in OED Online, Oxford: Oxford University Press, launched 2000.

German

Verb

hocket

1. Second-person plural subjunctive I of hocken.