Skip to main content
Glite Dictionary
meat hooks

meat hooks

1 7.5
Large strong hands used for fighting or heavy work
  • noun
  • Slang
translation icon : manos fuertes
  • He shook my hand with his large meat hooks, showing his strength.

Examples

  • When he lifted the heavy box, I could see his meat hooks flexing with power.

  • They say that this place is still haunted by the ghosts of three children they hung on meat hooks because their parents didn't pay the ransom.

    Fiction book (1998)

  • The boxer trained hard, knowing his meat hooks were his greatest asset in the ring.

Synonyms

mauler
vsmeat hooks
  • Archaic
9.5

A large strong hand used for hitting

includes large hands of fighters and also those of manual workers

Surface Forms

meat hooks plural
meat hook singular

Morphology

meat + hook

This is an informal, metaphorical slang term where 'meat hooks' refers to large, strong hands; the link between 'meat' + 'hook' and 'hands' is not a straightforward compositional meaning. A B1 learner who knows the constituent words would likely interpret a literal hook for handling meat rather than infer the idiomatic reference to big hands, so the meaning is not predictable from the parts.

Etymology

Meat hooks may come from the big metal hooks butchers use to lift heavy pieces of meat. If a person's hands look like those hooks, strong and able to grab or hold heavy things, they are called meat hooks, so the phrase means 'large, strong hands'.