Hoening
Hoening is the central liturgical practice of the Newfound Glory Hole — the verb, noun, and posture of midweek convening over beer and food, in the corpus continuously since 2022 and most commonly observed on Friday afternoons in inner Northeast Portland.
Hoening
Hoening (verb: to hoen; gerund: hoening; participial mass noun: hoens) is the central liturgical practice of the Newfound Glory Hole group chat. To hoen is to commit, with however much flexibility, to a midweek convening of the group — most commonly a Friday lunch — at one of a small rotation of inner Northeast Portland establishments. The word is used as a verb ("I'll hoen"), a noun ("That's 2 hoen"), an adjective ("I'm hoeny"), and a participle ("Hoening in spirit from Minnesota" — Max Lieberman, February 20, 2026). The gerund hoening appears in 22 messages spanning 2022-11-10 → 2026-04-16; the broader hoen-prefix family appears in 1,419 messages across the corpus (see Hoen).
Etymology
The participle hoening is first attested in the corpus on November 10, 2022, in a four-word message from Matt:
"Where is the hoening tomorrow?"
By this point the verb to hoen had been in the chat for eight months (first instance: Evan Bbbender, "Hoen," March 11, 2022) and the parent adjective hoeny for over a year (Kyle Derrick, "Great, now I'm hoeny," October 28, 2021). See Hoen for the full etymology of the root.
The construction settles into routine use during 2023. Daniel Miller asks "when are we hoening again?" on January 4, 2023; Max Lieberman writes "Working Friday but merry hoening" in his first attempt at the word on June 13, 2023; Evan Bbbender tests the interrogative on September 8, 2023 ("Anyone hoening or is this a hornless D?"); and Matt elevates it to early-modern English on September 22, 2023 ("Art thou hoening?"). The full conjugation is in place by the end of 2023.
The 2026 thread that produced the chat's modern hoening doctrine — Matt's "Hoen when you should be working is solidarity?" (January 29, 2026) — is the moment when hoening is re-framed as oppositional labor, but the practice itself is more than three years older.
Calling the hoens
To initiate a hoen, a member typically posts "Any hoens?" or "Where hoen?" and waits to see who responds. The construction "Any hoens out there for tomorrow?" enters the corpus on June 29, 2023 (Evan Bbbender) and has been recurring ever since. Confirmations are counted aloud, a habit dating to at least 2022-10-09 when Daniel Miller posted "1 hoen":
"1 hoen" — Evan Bbbender, April 2, 2026
"Hoen" — Matt
"2 hoens" — Evan Bbbender
"Hoen hoen hoen" — Max Lieberman
This counting practice has spawned its own register of partial hoens — "1.5 hoen" (Evan Bbbender, April 16, 2026), "my hoen has been downgraded to questionable but a later hoen would increase my chances" (Matt, April 16, 2026), and the "deluxe hoen" (Max Lieberman, March 13, 2026, mournfully: "Fuuuuck that's a deluxe hoen - sorry to miss it").
When a hoen is in danger of failing to materialize, members invoke a fixed Lord-of-the-Rings cadence first deployed by Daniel Miller on February 12, 2026:
"Light the hoen beacons"
To which Evan Bbbender responded, instantly and without negotiation:
"Hoendor calls for aid"
See Hoendor for the resulting cosmology.
Variants and configurations
By March 2026 the chat had begun naming sub-classes of hoen by venue and timbre:
- A classic Laurelhurst — the default, no-stakes hoen. (Laurelhurst as a venue dates to 2021.)
- A Sunday Sauce hoen — Italian, meatball-sub-shaped, often debated.
- A Jerry's hoen — depressed-inside-on-sunny-day energy.
- A Hat Yai hoen — Thai, served at Killingsworth's Hat Yai outpost.
- An Acrop hoen — short for Acropolis, the historic Portland steakhouse.
- A Hormuz hoen — a Strait of Hormuz-themed mid-April outing.
- A Sheets Kingdom hoen — March Madness bracket variant.
Daniel Miller proposed on March 13, 2026 that "the different hoen lunch configurations need their own monikers", which the chat has obliged organically and without committee. (Daniel had separately requested "a Hoen lunch scoreboard" as early as June 15, 2023, three years before any of this; the request has yet to be honored.)
Economics of the hoen
The corpus repeatedly returns to the question of whether the group is in a hoencession — a period of weak hoen demand. The term was coined by Matt on September 5, 2025 ("We might be in a recession but we are not in a hoencession") and re-derived by Evan Bbbender on February 12, 2026:
"Man, hoen lunch is hard sell these days." — Daniel Miller
"Are we in a hoencession?" — Evan Bbbender
A counter-doctrine is documented in Fuck Off Friday, which seeks to defeat the hoencession through total Friday work-stoppage.
Notable hoens
- November 10, 2022 — Matt: "Where is the hoening tomorrow?" — the corpus's first attestation of the gerund.
- September 23, 2022 — Evan Bbbender: "Hoen lunch today?" — the founding hoen-lunch proposal.
- March 20, 2026 — Evan declares "It's time for fuck off Friday - do no work - 2 hour dog walk - hoen lunch" — generally considered a high point.
- April 9, 2026 — A "Hoen lunch -> Maeve's party -> movie -> kachka -> cullen blacking out at karaoke" sequence (Daniel Miller) is proposed as the platonic ideal of a full hoen day.
- May 1, 2026 — A patron at Jerry's Tavern gifts the bartender a signed Creed jersey; Jerry begins "blasting Creed" mid-hoen.