hockey stick

noun hockey sticks

1. Canada, US A stick used to handle the puck in ice hockey, having a flat, angled blade at the end.
2. UK A stick used to handle the ball in field hockey, having a flat-faced hook at the end. The game itself, though played by men, was probably meant to enact a mediation of the opposites of male and female, with a circular puck being the feminine symbol and the phallic hockey stick being the masculine symbol.
3. A playing card with the rank of seven.
4. informal A statistical trend in a graph of survey data in which most of the results are flat and then the graph suddenly peaks in a steep near-vertical direction. One of the pillars of the case for man-made global warming is a graph nicknamed the hockey stick. It's a reconstruction of temperatures over the past 1,000 years based on records captured in tree rings, corals and other markers. The stick's shaft shows temperatures oscillating slightly over the ages