Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Slang A jail or prison.
- adj. Informal Variant of poky1.
Wiktionary
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. See poky.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. small and remote and insignificant
- n. a correctional institution used to detain persons who are in the lawful custody of the government (either accused persons awaiting trial or convicted persons serving a sentence)
- adj. wasting time
Etymologies
- Origin unknown.
Examples
“I sincerely hope he sorts himself out whilst he is in pokey!”
“12: 48 OJ Simpson gets 15 years in pokey and Knight Rider's been cut back to 17 episodes.”
“Paris is in the pokey, which is just a lot of fun to say.”
“Apple CEO Steve Jobs doesn't think much of any kind of Flash and has said it's too pokey, which is why it's not on the thing.”
“Sorry, I've never actually used the word 'pokey' in a blog post.”
“The word "pokey" cannot be found in the dictionary.”
“That Your Majesty was "pokey" and that she didn't intend to stay there any longer.”
“Looks kind of pokey, doesn't it?" said Allery Jones.”
“Even though the threat of spending 30 years in the pokey will be a powerful incentive for Libby to cut some kind of deal that might include turning on his boss, the possibility of the additional charges of revealing classified information, particularly against Cheney, is even more powerful since, presumably, Cheney does’t appear to be at risk of a truth-telling-related indictment.”
“Generally, this worked well with Web surfing, but sometimes my devices seemed kind of pokey: Downloading a song onto an iPhone that was connected wirelessly to the Pre Plus seemed to take much longer than it should, for example.”
bilby See hokey. Jul 4, 2009
reesetee Gumby's sidekick. Dec 13, 2007
oroboros Gaol,brig,slammer et al. Dec 6, 2007
john "Moving at an average speed of 4 mph in noontime traffic, the M23 won this year's "Pokey" Award, a creation of the Straphangers Campaign and Transportation Alternatives."
- Daily News, October 31, 2007 Nov 17, 2007