hooch

1 of 2

noun (1)

ˈhüch 

slang

: alcoholic liquor especially when inferior or illicitly made or obtained

hooch

2 of 2

noun (2)

ˈhüch 

variants or hootch

slang

: a usually thatched hut

broadly : dwelling

Synonyms

Noun (1)

• alcohol
• aqua vitae
• ardent spirits
• booze
• bottle
• drink
• firewater
• grog
• inebriant
• intoxicant
• John Barleycorn
• juice [slang]
• liquor
• lush [slang]
• moonshine
• potable
• rum
• sauce [slang]
• spirits
• stimulant
• strong drink
• tipple

Noun (2)

• cabin
• camp
• hovel
• hut
• hutch
• hutment
• shack
• shanty

Examples of hooch in a Sentence

Noun (1)

during Prohibition, everybody drank homemade hooch

Noun (2)

the soldiers quickly threw up the hooches where they would be living for the next few weeks

Recent Examples on the Web

Noun

Sipping the hooch were club promoters Unik and Kiki, plus real estate developer Bruce Eichner and his wife, Leslie. —Richard Johnson, New York Daily News, 16 Mar. 2025

In the back of the same floor, a cozy bar offers high-end hooch, the madam’s teller’s cage and the setting for The Gator Club’s scariest ghost stories. —Usa Today Network, USA TODAY, 29 July 2024

The gender divide is even more pronounced than the generational one, with the women mostly indoors, united in exasperation with their men, and the men standing about outside drinking homebrew hooch and swapping wry strategies about how best to manage their outspoken women. —Jessica Kiang, Variety, 5 July 2024

Get The Recipe 43 of 54 Apple-Pie Infused Bourbon Turn a plain bottle of hooch into a top-shelf indulgence, infused with sweet autumn flavor. —Southern Living Editors, Southern Living, 28 Mar. 2024

Alcoholic beverages will include $6 light draft beers, the Wolverine bite drink of Corazon Blanco, blue curacao, lime juice, simple syrup, and lemonade, and the husky hooch drink of Wheatley Vodka, Creme de Violette, lime juice, simple syrup lemonade. —Jenna Prestininzi, Detroit Free Press, 5 Jan. 2024

In the 1920s, Moonlight Beach was popular with sunbathers, race-horse aficionados and bootleggers, who used the beach as a hooch drop-off point. —San Diego Union-Tribune, 2 Oct. 2023

Other scofflaws are refilling empty premium bottles with cheap hooch and passing them off as the real thing. —Justin Jouvenal, Washington Post, 20 Sep. 2022

Saloons were supplanted by speakeasies, complete with secret passwords and off-the-menu hooch. —National Geographic, 2 Nov. 2020

Word History

Etymology

Noun (1)

short for hoochinoo, a distilled liquor made by the Hoochinoo (Hutsnuwu) Indians, a Tlingit tribe

Noun (2)

modification of Japanese uchi house

First Known Use

Noun (1)

1897, in the meaning defined above

Noun (2)

1960, in the meaning defined above

Rhymes for hooch

• brooch
• cooch
• gooch
• baluch
• mapuche

Biographical Definition

Hooch

biographical name

ˈhōḵ 

variants or Hoogh

Pieter de 1629–after 1684 Dutch painter