VERY silly and obvious question.probably...So...
 

... did Tommy loose his guitar due to some kind of debt, and what he's 'holding in' is his songs that he used to play? Or did he obtain his guitar in a deal but hes still ''holding in'' what he used to make it talk... meh. The phrasing of that line always confused me as a kid, especially as I still don't know exactly what ''in hock'' means as its a word/phrase i've never used before - is it an american slang? I always thought it meant something like to give something as compensation or as part of a deal to pay something off...?

I get the jist of it though- poor Tommys life is tough (so tough!)


andi

I think 'in hock' means in debt. I could be wrong though :(

In hock means leaving it with a pawnbroker.

Basically, Tommy had to sell his guitar at a pawn shop to get money, since th dockworkers are on strike.








There's a sentence I never thought I'd write.

With a pawnbroker you can sell an item outright but 'in hock' implies the other way a pawnbroker works in that Tommy would have given his guitar to the pawnbroker who would have loaned him some money and kept the guitar as collatoral. If Tommy doesn't pay back the loan within an agreed time period then the pawnbroker keeps the guitar and can sell it to get back the money he loaned Tommy. The amount of the loan (inc interest) is usually less than the selling value of the pawned item, or the pawnbroker would lose out on all non-redeemed items.

This is exactly why I have a really good online British slang dictionary bookmarked. We don't realize just how much of what we say is slang and not understood by folks from other countries. BTW, I've adopted "gutted" and "sorted" and have started to use them here in the American south. Soon no one will know what I'm saying. :p

Steve, you sound like you know WAY too much about pawnshops! You didn't pawn baby Lucas, did you? :shock::shock:

interestting thread ive never really understood this either to be honest

LOL And I never even thought of it. "In hock" is a very common phrase here. I even use it when my clothes are at the dry cleaners. I say I have to get them "out of hock" because I have to pay money before they'll give them to me!

Well, it seems i was close enough with my understanding of the phrase then, but stil in all 24 years of my life I have never ever heard the term outside of this line from the song!

andi