hocus

1689, Roger L’Estrange (translator), Twenty-Two Select Colloquies out of Erasmus Roterodamus, London: R. Bentley & R. Sare, p. 33, ’Tis rather to exercise our Curiosity, and keep us from Idleness, or worse Diversions, as running mad after Buffoons, Dice, Fortune-tellers, and Hocus’s, &c.

1685, Robert South, “A Sermon Preached at Christ-Church, Oxon, Before the University, May 3. 1685” in Twelve Sermons Preached upon Several Occasions, London: Thomas Bennett, 1692, p. 523, […] when thy Brother has lost all that ever he had, and lies languishing, and even gasping under the utmost extremities of poverty and distress, dost thou think thus to lick him whole again, only with thy Tongue? just like that old formal Hocus, who denyed a Beggar a farthing, and put him off with his Blessing.

1871, Benjamin Jowett, letter to Florence Nightingale dated 29 September, 1871, cited in Edward Tyas Cook, The Life of Florence Nightingale, London: Macmillan, 1913, Volume 2, Part 7, Chapter 1, p. 223, […] I do not agree with you in thinking that there are no difficulties, although the old difficulties, about the origin of evil &c., are generally a hocus of Theologians.

1677, Poor Robin’s Visions, London: Arthur Boldero, Eighth Vision, p. 117, […] to contemplate the miseries of a poor Poetick life, or study some well laid plot to Hocus his Landlady into a further credence or belief […]

1905, Baroness Emmuska Orczy, “The Hocussing of Cigarette” in Baroness Orczy’s Old Man in the Corner: The Old Man in the Corner, The Case of Miss Elliott, The Glasgow Mystery, Landsville, Pennsylvania: Coachwhip Publications, 2010, p. 243, Then I had a good think on the subject of the hocussing of Cigarette, and I was reluctantly bound to admit that once again the man in the corner had found the only possible solution to the mystery.