by hook or by crook

From earlier by howke or crooke, by hoke ne by croke, etc., from Middle English wiþ hok or crok, wiþ hook or wiþ crok; further origin unknown. One suggestion is that the term is derived from the common of estovers, an ancient right in English law for tenants of land to gather dead wood on common land using blunt tools such as hooks and shepherd’s crooks.

• "She was determined to win the contract by hook or by crook."
• "Nor wyll suffre this boke / By hoke ne by croke / Prynted for to be, […]"
• "Some out of that inſatiable deſire of filthy lucre, to enrich themſelues, care not hovv they come by it, per fas & nefas [by right and wrong], hooke or crooke, ſo they haue it."
• "Novv if you could put us in a vvay, by hook or by crook, to get her out of the convent—"
• "P.S. I hope you will be enabled by hook or by crook, to send B—— and H——, together with a certain Mr. Guthrie, to Philadelphia, for their winter quarters."
• "Thus, by diverse little make shifts, in that ingenious way which is commonly denominated "by hook and by crook," the worthy pedagogue got on tolerably enough, and was thought, by all those who undersood nothing of the labour of headwork, to have a wonderful easy life of it."
• "Since we've looked up a little in the world, I saved up five guineas, by hook or by crook, and tried to get Poll back again, but the lady said she wouldn't take fifty guineas for him."
• "Can you not drive over and see me? Do come by hook or by crook."
• "In these fields of Mr. Tulkinghorn's inhabiting, where the shepherds play on Chancery pipes that have no stop, and keep their sheep in the fold by hook and by crook until they have shorn them exceeding close, every noise is merged, this moonlight night, into a distant ringing hum, as if the city were a vast glass, vibrating."
• "And, by hook or by crook, Hedger Luxellian was made a lord, and everything went on well till some time after, when he got into a most terrible row with King Charles the Fourth— […]"
• "I wouldn't have believed it of myself; but, then—you see—I felt somehow I must get there by hook or by crook."
• "He had destroyed his talent by not using it, by betrayals of himself and what he believed in, by drinking so much that he blunted the edge of his perceptions, by laziness, by sloth, and by snobbery, by pride and by prejudice, by hook and by crook."

• at all costs
• by any means
• by fair means or foul
• no matter what
• whatever it takes
• with hook or crook

• stop at nothing