Correct usage of the verb "to hock"

Sometimes I read/hear the verb "to hock" used as a synonym of "peddle/hawk", as in "The street vendor hocked his wares."

Is that correct? I always thought that "to hock" meant "to pawn". Perhaps it's a colloquial/street usage?

Edit: As coincidence would have it, I stumbled upon an infographic that uses the verb exactly like that. WARNING: it's a comparison between comedians Bill Hicks and Denis Leary, there's some mild swearing, so might be NSFW.

Also in this article as well. ("In businessese, this means that businesses will have more tools to aggressively hock their brand to Facebook users who like their product.")

Solution 1:

From the eggcorn database:

Like wrought » rot and naught » not, this is an eggcorn that works best for those with the cot/caught merger.

Hawk ‘to offer for sale (by calling out in the street)’ and hock ‘to pawn’, though not etymologically related, are semantically close enough to make this a relatively common eggcorn.

Note also that hawk in the sense of ‘cough up phlegm’ (as in hawk a loogie) often appears in the form of hock (see David Wilton’s Wordorigins).

So, you're right to be suspicious. Hock means to pawn, while hawk means to sell. The two homophones are sometimes mistakenly interchanged to give us the eggcorn.

Solution 2:

From here:

To sell something which you hope to buy back later because you need money now.

She had to hock her wedding ring.

Solution 3:

To 'hawk' your wares is to sell them, and yes that often refers to the people who yell out what they are selling in the street,they are sometimes referred to as 'hawkers'. Still, the word hawk in the form of a verb means to 'sell' or.....(yuk) spit.

To 'hock' is to pawn....yet, if u don't uphold your contract the pawn shop then holds the right to 'hawk' (sell) what you brought to them planning to just 'hock'.

Interestingly, it is not easy to find either 'hawk' or 'hock' (used as we have been discussing) in an English dictionary, although it can be found in what they call 'urban' dictionaries. What seems this odd is that it's been commonly used in English language as far back as the late 1800's.