hock

/hɒk/ noun [U] informal

Definition

in hock (to sb/sth) › in debt: Most construction firms are deeply in hock to a single bank rather than to a handful of lenders. › possessions that are in hock are pawned (= left temporarily with someone in exchange for an amount of money that must be paid back after a particular period of time to prevent the thing from being sold): He put everything he had in hock to buy the house, and still ended up owing money.

go into/get out of hock › to get into or get out of debt: Until we either curb our appetite for imports or become a lot better at exporting, the more we trade the deeper we go into hock Few believe that any legal action can yield the billions that the company needs to get out of hock.

(Definition of hock noun from the Cambridge Business English Dictionary © Cambridge University Press)