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Glite Dictionary
🪁 An absurd idea 🚁 A lifting helicopter
skyhook

skyhook

1 9.9
An imaginary hook in the sky used as a joke for impossible things
  • noun
  • /ˈskaɪˌhʊk/
translation icon : gancho del cielo
  • The 16-foot bronze statue immortalizes Abdul-Jabbar's iconic skyhook, naturally, and greets fans as they enter the main entrance near Chick Hearn Drive and Figueroa Street.

And they tell us that there aren't any placements in the top, so you can only use skyhooks.

Examples

  • The egregious omission was finally rectified when a 16-foot, 1,500-pound statue in the classic skyhook pose was unveiled on Friday night.

    Blog text (8)

  • Given a choice, Krake told himself justly, between a scattering of satellites and the entry to the galaxy that the Skyhook offered, obviously the Skyhook was a better bargain.

    Fiction book (1991)

  • And why on earth don't we still see still see the skyhook in the NBA?

  • Kareem was already firing skyhooks out there early, out there early.

  • We brought down the cone of shadow, where it was shielded, to the orbiting station for their Skyhook.

    Fiction book (1991)

  • That is to say, we are going to analyze this matter in the framework of naturalism, without ever resorting to skyhooks.

    Blog text (11)

  • "I mean the skyhook isn't a Turtle invention—or not just theirs, anyway."

    Fiction book (1991)

  • Given a choice, Krake told himself justly, between a scattering of satellites and the entry to the galaxy that the Skyhook offered, obviously the Skyhook was a better bargain.

    Fiction book (1991)

  • Kareem Abdul-Jabbar—first in goggles, first in skyhooks, first on the all-time NBA scoring list with 38,387 points.

    Blog text (8)

  • Many people believe that a skyhook is a fantastical concept used in jokes to describe something unreal.

Synonyms

whangdoodle
vsskyhook
  • Archaic
9.9

An odd gadget that seems useless and hard to understand

means an imagined impossible device suspended above used jokingly

Antonyms

possibility
∞ 2.0

A chance that something may happen

reality
∞ 1.4

The way things really are, not how we imagine or wish

Surface Forms

skyhook singular
skyhooks plural

Morphology

skyhook = sky + hook (semi-transparent) = sky + hook

Formed from 'sky' + 'hook' and the components suggest the idea, but the sense is metaphorical/fanciful and not a literal object, so learners may not infer the precise idiomatic use.

Etymology

Skyhook is made from the simple words sky and hook, so imagine a hook hanging in the sky. A helpful way to remember this meaning is to picture a made-up hook that could 'lift' anything — because that image is 'impossible', people call a fanciful or made-up solution a skyhook.