<P> "By hook or by crook" is an English phrase meaning "by any means necessary", suggesting that any means possible should be taken to accomplish a goal . The phrase is very old, first recorded in the Middle English Controversial Tracts of John Wyclif in 1380 . </P> <P> The origin of the phrase is obscure, with multiple different explanations and no evidence to support any particular one over the others . For example, a commonly repeated suggestion is that it comes from Hook Head in Wexford, Ireland and the nearby village of Crooke, in Waterford, Ireland . Another is that it comes from the customs regulating which firewood local people could take from common land; they were allowed to take any branches that they could reach with a billhook or a shepherd's crook (used to hook sheep). </P> <P> The phrase was featured in the opening credits to the 1960s British television series The Prisoner . It appears prominently (as "by hook and by crook") in the short stories "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" by Ernest Hemingway and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" by Washington Irving . It was also used as the title of a 2001 film, By Hook or by Crook, directed by Silas Howard and Harry Dodge . </P>

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