Chrysti the Wordsmith > Radio Scripts

Although the word hooker has been cited as a synonym for prostitute since at least the mid 19th century, no one can claim with certainty where the term originated. Several respected etymologists have offered a handful of theories on the genesis of hooker.

The scholar and poet John Ciardi believes it arose from British slang. He cites a volume of interviews with London prostitutes published in 1857. Says one: "We hooks [a clergyman] now and then." Another states, "I've hooked many a man by showing an ankle on a wet day." This may be an analogy to hooking a fish, or simply the action of a prostitute hooking arms with a client to draw him in.

Meanwhile, John Bartlett, the compiler of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations has the term coming from Corlear's Hook, a district in New York City. He said a hooker is "a resident of the Hook, i.e. a strumpet...So called from the number of houses of ill-fame frequented by the sailors at the Hook [Corlear's Hook] in the city of New York."

The etymologist Eric Partridge suggests hooker is based on the word huckster, meaning hawker or peddler.

The most colorful but least probable theory makes Civil War General Joseph Hooker the eponym of the word in question. It's often been cited that hordes of sex peddlers followed Joseph Hooker's Union soldiers from camp to camp, and were often called Hooker's Reserves. Tempting as it is to lean on this theory, most word watchers dismiss it, since the citations of the term hooker predate the Civil War by decades.

Radio Script > Hooker