republic

January 19, 2021

19 January 2021

The word republic has a straightforward origin. It is a borrowing from both the Middle French republique and the Latin respublica. The Latin word literally means public (publica) matters (res), but it was used in antiquity to refer to the state, any state that was not tyrannical or despotic, and sometimes particularly to the Roman state that existed prior to the dictatorship of Julius Caesar. In post-classical use it was used to refer to the Byzantine Empire and the Papal State, and eventually to any political entity that had an elected, non-hereditary ruler.

The word’s first appearance in an English text appears to be in John Lydgate’s A Lytell Treatyse of the Horse, the Sheep, and the Ghoos, which was composed 1436–37. The poem tells a fable of a horse, a sheep, and a goose who debate which of them is more useful to humanity. Lydgate’s use of the word is instructive as he uses the Latin ablative form as opposed to an English inflection, indicating that the word was not yet fully Anglicized:

Eche for his partye proudely gan procede
To force hym selfe by recorde of scrypture
By phylosophers as clerkes seen and rede
The prerogatyues / gyuen hem by nature
Whiche of these thre / to euery creature
In republyca / auayleth moost a man
(Each, for his part, proudly endeavored to explain, according to the record of scripture and philosophers seen and read by students, the prerogatives given him by nature as to which of these three, of every creature in the republic, is most useful to man.)

Lydgate is using republic in the sense of community or commonwealth, rather than a political entity or state. The same sense appears a century later, only this time fully Anglicized, in John Hooper’s 1549 Declaration of the Ten Holy Commaundmentes:

We shuld none othere wyce loue the superiore powres of the erthe and be affeccionatyd vnto them then vnto oure naturall parentes and obey the[m] in all thinges that is consonant or not agaynst the lawe of god like wyce the superiour poures shuld be none other wyce affectio[n] with loue towardes there subiectes the[n] the father is against the sonne. Consider the worke and ordinance of God in this superiorite and dominion that preseruithe the godd / punishithe the ile / auau[n]sithe vertew / and oppressithe vice / to the preseruatio[n] a[n]d wealthe of the Republick.
(We should on no other terms love the superior powers of the earth, be affectionate unto them than unto our natural parents, and obey them in all things that are consonant and not against the law of God, likewise the superior powers should in no other terms have affection with love towards their subject than the father is to the son. Consider the work and ordinance of God in the superiority and dominion that preserves the good, punishes the ill, advances virtue, and oppresses vice to the preservation and wealth of the republic.)

The sense of a political state ruled by elected leaders is in place by the end of the sixteenth century, and in early use was often used to refer to the governments of the Italian city-states. A 1596 letter from Venice to King James VI of Scotland has this:

It salbe onto ovsse most dessyrrous and villing all the gud lovks of his maieftie inkressmg in gretnes. And ve sall not fell in ovr pairts for to schav all favorable correspondance, as his maiestie sall find in freindschap and amittie to his hines being so veill lykitt of be ovsse, acording to the institutioun and form of this our Repoblik.
(It shall be unto us most desirous and willing all the good intentions of his majesty increasing in greatness. And you shall not fail in our parts to have only favorable correspondence, as his majesty shall find in friendship and amity to his highness being so well liked by us, according to the institution and form of this our republic.)

In the late eighteenth century, republic was applied to the United States and the governments of revolutionary France. The U.S. Constitution does not refer to the U.S. government as a republic, but Article IV.4 uses the adjectival form:

The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government.

And since the twentieth century, republic has often been used in the titles of dictatorial states that are anything but. (Cf. banana republic )

democracy

January 19, 2021

President Barack Obama delivering the 2011 State of the Union message to a joint session of Congress, 24 January 2011

19 January 2021

There has been an argument, coming mainly from right-wing circles, that the United States is not a democracy, that it is a republic. The argument states that a democracy refers to a polity where the citizens rule directly through majority vote on all matters; whereas a republic is one in which the citizens elect representatives to rule. The argument is wrong. Except perhaps in abstract and technical definitions in political science textbooks, democracy has never solely meant direct, majority rule by citizens—even the Athenian democracy of antiquity had elected representatives who governed on many matters. And as to the United States, it is both a democracy and a republic.

The English word democracy was borrowed from the French democracie in the fifteenth century, which came from post-classical Latin democratia, and that in turn is from the Greek δημοκρατία. The Greek roots are δῆμος (demos, people) + -κρατια (kratia, rule or power). An early appearance of the English word is in a late fifteenth-century translation of Alain Chartier’s Le Traité de l’Esperance (The Treatise on Hope):

Some ther be also that be gouerned persones enstablisched to rule for a certayne tyme, which haue power to guyde the comonalte by myghti auctorite, euery man after his degre; and vndir this forme the Florentynes institute their princes by the wise counceill of the olde fadirs. And this power is callid polytyke(ly) Thy(mo)tracye, which some, for doubtefull vnstablenesse of ofte chaunginge their rewlers and to þentent also to avoide occasions (of) divisions of chesinges and parcialite of gouernours, lefte that and loued better to continewe, by order of nature and reule of doctryne, their lordeship in a wele-rewled house and vndir gloriouse kynderede thanne ofte to fall in murmoure and rumoure of mutacions, discordes and envyes. And ayeinst thes thre spices of polecye be raysid vnlawfull vsurpacions, which is contrarye and grette hurte to the realme: Tyranny, Aristogracye, in which fewe men will reule by iustice, Oligracie, Tymotracie and Democracie, which shulde gouerne the vniuersall people, ys now withowt ordre.

Chartier does not look favorably upon democracy. And other writers equate democracy with mob rule. For example, there is this 1576 translation of Pisistratus’s letter to Solon by Abraham Fleming. Pisistratus was a populist and benevolent Athenian dictator, and here he is justifying his rule as being more effective than democracy:

Furthermore, against the Gods I haue committed no crime, and as for me I haue them not offended. The lawes and decrées which you prescribed to the Atheniens, I commaund them duely to be obserued, and charge them to frame the course of their liues, after the same your ordinaunces: and vndoubtedly, the obseruation of them is better séene to and prouided, then it would otherwise be, in *Democracie, when the multitude haue gouernement. For what do I? I suffer no man to be oppressed with iniurie: I am content with my Monarchicall maiestie or title royall: I diminish nothing that is proper to the comonaltie: I am satisfied with these stipends and payments, which were due to my predecessors, long before this power fell to my possession: I burthen none with newe exactions, tributes, or subsidies.

But while Pisistratus says his benevolent dictatorship is better, he does not throw shade on democracy in and of itself. But Fleming’s marginal note presents a different evaluation. For democracie Fleming notes:

* Whe[n] the people rule the ro[u?]st, a monster of many heads.

Until the eighteenth century, most writers in English held a similar view. Opinions on democracy would change, however, with the American revolution and the formation of the United States. Democracy came to refer to egalitarianism, liberalism and liberty, rule of law, and any government or institution that embodied these principles, regardless of the particular mechanisms of government so long as its leaders were selected and held accountable by the people.

In a letter to his constituents on 22 October 1836, British parliamentarian Thomas Perronet Thompson, representing Kingston upon Hull, wrote:

The present dilemma, is between giving up what we have got of our own, and securing it by taking more. If we are to escape the right way, it is hardly necessary to say, it must be by union, moderation, and neither being too hasty nor too slow. Let no man be frightened by the word “democracy." Democracy means the community's governing through its representatives for its own benefit, instead of the benefit of somebody else. All intimations that somebody else knows better what is for your good, are frauds when applied to a nation as far advanced in intelligence and habits of self-management as Great Britain.

Even a constitutional monarchy, like Victorian Britain, could be a democracy.

And on 25 November 1890, this appeared in the Pall Mall Gazette regarding the late Italian statesman Giuseppe Mazzini:

Indeed, enthusiasm was always a marked characteristic of Mazzini’s nature; and if he was more a prophet than a statesman the former was, after all, the nobler part. “Progress of all through all, under the leading of the best and wisest,” was his definition of democracy, and it has been said to be the noblest ever given to the world.

And democracy extends beyond governments. There is this “Mr. Know-It-All” advice column in Wired magazine of September 2008 that refers to the social media app Twitter as a democracy:

Is it cool for me to Twitter that I'm about to boff my girlfriend?
The knee-jerk response would be to castigate you for incivility both to your lady friend and your Twitter clan. Such risqué tweets will likely skeeve out your girl and followers or make the latter envious. Neither action should be encouraged.
But then again, Twitter is a democracy if users don't like your tweets, they can vote with their PCs and drop your feed. So on the off chance your girlfriend is OK with having your coital calendar go public, and you don't mind losing a few Twitter pals, feel free to try this out. Mr. Know-It-All is Mr. Less-Is-More in this case and finds your exhibitionism sort of desperate and lame. But perhaps your Twitter crew is a more swinging bunch.

Mr. Know-It-All’s classification refers to the facts that Twitter users can choose whose feeds to follow, users are equal in their ability to use the service, and there are terms of service (i.e., rule of law) that govern what content is permissible. Twitter does adhere to democratic principles in such matter, but in regard to the governing structure of the platform, Twitter is an oligarchy (i.e., rule by the executives and directors), or perhaps a timocracy, where property holders (i.e., shareholders) govern.

Democracy has never simply meant direct rule by the populace. It, as is usually the case with reality, is more complicated than that.

(Cf. republic)

Discuss this post

Sources:

Blayney, Margaret S., ed. Fifteenth-Century English Translations of Alain Chartier’s Le Traité de l’Esperance and Le Quadrilogue Invectif. Early English Text Society 270. London: Oxford UP, 1974, 55–56. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Rawlinson A.338. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

“Dear Mr. Know-It-All.” Wired, September 2008, 44. EBSCOhost: Applied Science and Technology Source Ultimate.

Fleming, Abraham. “Pisistratus to Solon.” A Panoplie of Epistles. London: H. Middleton for Ralph Newberie, 1576, 198. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

“A New Edition of Mazzini.” The Pall Mall Gazette, 25 November 1890, 2. Gale Primary Sources: British Library Newspapers.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, March 2014, s.v. democracy, n.

Thompson, Thomas Perronet. “Letter, 22 October 1836.” Letters of a Representative to His Constituents. London: Effingham Wilson, 1836, 130. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Photo Credit: Chuck Kennedy, 24 January 2011, Executive Office of the President of the United States. Public domain photo.

hooky / play hooky

January 18, 2021

Engraving accompanying the 1856 Mother’s Magazine story on the dangers of playing hooky, showing a young boy freezing in a snowy forest — Engraving accompanying the 1856 *Mother’s Magazine* story on the dangers of playing hooky, showing a young boy freezing in a snowy forest

18 January 2021

One of the pleasures of researching the origin or words is reading texts written in days past that reflect a very different sensibility than that which we have today. Such is the case with the origin of hooky or hookey, meaning truancy, usually found in the verbal phrase to play hooky. The nineteenth century literature is replete with lurid tales of what evils can befall children who skip school.

As to the origin of this American slang word, we don’t know for certain, but it has a likely origin in the Frisian hoeckje, meaning corner, and hoeckje spelen is to play hide-and-seek in Dutch. The word was introduced to North America through the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam, what is now New York. In his 1865 Anthology of New Netherland, Henry Murphy writes of Nicasius de Sillè, first councilor to Governor Stuyvesant of the New Netherland colony, c. 1656, saying:

It marks the simplicity of the times to read his complaints, on one occasion, to the burgomasters and schepens of the city, of the dogs making dangerous attacks upon him while performing that service, of the hallooing of the Indians in the streets, and the boys playing hoeckje, that is, playing hide and seek around the hooks or corners of the streets, to the prejudice of quiet and good order.

And a hundred years later, Robert Carse writes of the New Amsterdam colony, saying, “boys played hoeky—pranks on each other.” These are later writings, but I am sure that a Dutch speaker who delves into the original documents from the seventeenth century colony would find examples the Dutch word being used.

Fifty years ago, researcher John Sinnema suggested that hooky survived in the slang of school children, changing in meaning over the years, perhaps influenced by the sense of to hook meaning to steal, and coming to mean to play the truant. The idea is plausible, but the long gap between the Dutch colony and the term’s next recorded appearance in the mid nineteenth century somewhat militates against it.

In any case, hooky makes its way into English publication by 17 June 1842 in the pages of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

For it is a fact that “men are but children of a larger growth.” “When I was a child, I spake as a child,” &c., “but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”—That is, if we rightly understand the language, he no longer drove the hoop, shot marbles, flyed kites, (not even after the Wall Street fashion,) hunted birds’ nests, played “hookey,” and chased butterflies, with eyes nearly starting from their sockets with excitement, and his long, silken tresses streaming in the breeze (for it was not the custom to rob the children’s heads of their beautiful locks in those days.)

There is this March 1846 “advertisement” in the Common School Journal. I place “advertisement” in scare quotes because the item is almost certainly a joke and not a real advertisement for a teacher’s services:

ADVERTISEMENT. — Mr. Starling respecktfully caution his patterns and the publick that he is a going to teach a scool in this town in the branches of learning and the scolars will find there own books as will be well used except them that plays hookey will be licked with the strap, — 8 cuts for a big boy, and 5 cuts for a little one. For further infarmation, inquire of Mr. Prass the sope biler whose darter gut her edication as above. N. b. — Wanted a plaice to board with washing and a bed all to hisself.
EBEN STARLING, JUN. Balt. Sat. Visiter.

And John Russell Bartlett records the term in his 1848 Dictionary of Americanisms, making it clear that the term was rather common by the time it first sees print:

HOOKEY. To play hookey, is to play truant. A term used among schoolboys.

A use from an 1856 issue of Mother’s Magazine gives a slightly different definition of playing hooky, that is not coming directly home after school and instead getting into mischief. The article, titled “The Comforts of Playing Hookie,” in its opening refers to the accompanying picture of a boy lost in a snowy forest, far from home, and certain to die a horrible death on account of disobeying his mother:

Have you any sympathy with this poor boy? Do any of you see your own likeness here? Do you remember when you strayed away, after school, to have a slide, or a skating, on the pond, knowing all the while that your mother was expecting you home? Do you remember how, when it was near dark, and the snow began to fall thick and heavy, you started on your way home, half frozen, dissatisfied with yourself, and ready to cry with vexation, without finding anybody to be vexed with but yourself? Then you began to wish you had gone directly home from school

The difference in meaning may be the result of the slang term being used in slightly different ways by different communities, or perhaps the adult author and editors did not quite understand the children’s slang term.

One more lurid tale before we leave it. An 1868 tale by Mary Prescott tells of young Tommy, who skips school, falls in with a bad lot, gets arrested for fighting, and narrowly escapes having to tell his mother when another woman, mistaking him for her own son, rescues him from jail:

But if there are obstacles in the way of being a good boy, he soon found that to be a bad boy was not to live in clover; for he was hardly a rod from the door when his mother called out that he had forgotten his satchel, and he must needs go back for it! What did a boy who was going to play truant want of a satchel? But still he had to drag it along with him all the same.
By and by he fell in with some other schoolboys, some of whom had had permission to stay away, while others, like himself, were taking it. This encouraged Tommy mightily. I'm not certain but he would have ended by going to school, after all, if he hadn't fallen in with them.
“Brought your satchel along,” said one of them; “what a greeny you are, Tommy ' If the master should happen to see you, he'd know in a minute that you were playing hooky.”

The story continues with Tommy, falling under the bad influence of the other boys, being arrested before eventually being returned to the loving embrace of his mother, narrowly avoiding going down the path to a life of crime. Such is what can befall the truant, at least in the imaginings of nineteenth-century parents and editors.

In any case, by the second half of the nineteenth century, hooky was a well established term in the vocabulary of both children and adults.

Discuss this post

Sources:

Bartlett, John Russell. Dictionary of Americanisms. New York: Bartlett and Welford, 1848, 180. HathiTrust Digital Library.

“Public Amusements.” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 17 June 1842, 2. Brooklyn Public Library: Brooklyn Newsstand.

Carse, Robert. Ports of Call. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1967, 149. HathiTrust Digital Library.

“The Comforts of Playing ‘Hookie.’” The Mother’s Magazine, 25.3, 1856, 91. HathiTrust Digital Library.

The Common School Journal, 8.5, 3 March 1846, 76. HathiTrust Digital Library.

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2020, s.v. hooky, n.3, play hooky, v.

Murphy, Henry C. Anthology of New Netherland. New York: Bradford Club, 1865. 188. HathiTrust Digital Library.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. hookey, n.

Prescott, Mary N. “Playing Truant.” Our Boys and Girls, 4.80, 11 July 1868, 440–41. HathiTrust Digital Library.

Sinnema, John R. “The Dutch Origin of Play Hookey.” American Speech, 45.3/4, Autumn–Winter 1970, 205–209. JSTOR.

shanty

January 16, 2021

16 January 2021

The word shanty has two distinct meanings in English, and in actuality it is two different words, each from a different French root. It can be rude hut or dwelling, and it can be song sung by sailors.

The hut sense is most likely from the Canadian French chantier, a logger’s cabin or camp, but also possibly influenced by the Irish sean tig, hut. Both French and Irish laborers in the wilds of Upper Canada in the early nineteenth century may have contributed to the creation of this word.

But the earliest recorded use of the word that I have found is from the United States, specifically in Ohio in 1820. But that does not necessarily negate the Canadian origin, as trappers and loggers would have roamed freely in the wilds of the frontier. And it is clear from the early sources that the term existed in oral use for some time before appearing in a published source. In a letter to his brother, dated 7 October 1820, Zerah Hawley writes of his travels in northeastern Ohio:

October 7 [1820].—Rode to a part of H[arpersfiel]d, to see a child sick of the intermittent fever, whose parents with two children, lived in what is here called a Shanty. This is a hovel of about ten feet by eight, made somewhat in the form of an ordinary cow-house, having but an half roof, or roof on one side. It is however, inclosed on all sides.

In his 1849 autobiography, Scots-Canadian trader and explorer John McLean writes of his travels in Quebec in September 1822. While this passage is written decades after the fact, it remains good evidence of the term’s existence in the early 1820s:

My man had visited the Indian on several occasions during the previous winter, and told me that he usually halted at a Chantier,* on the way to the lodge. We arrived late in the evening at the locality in question, and finding a quantity of timber collected on the ices, concluded that the shanty must be close at hand. We accordingly followed the lumber-track until we reached the hut which had formerly afforded such comfortable accommodation to my companion.

And McLean’s note on chantier reads:

* The hut used by the lumbermen, and the root of the well-known “shanty.”

Shanty, meaning a sailor’s song, appears somewhat later and, while also from French, has a very different origin. This one is quite straightforward and obvious; it’s from the French chantez, the imperative of chanter, to sing. The word can be dated to the 1860s. but may be much older in sailor’s lingo. But it is not recorded in Smyth’s 1867 Sailor’s Word Book (that source only records the hut sense), so it is likely not that much older in oral use.

An article on sea shanties appears in the British magazine Once a Week on 1 August 1868:

SHANTY—a word which those who are curious in etymology will at once be able to connect with chant—is the name applied to a class of songs but little known to landsfolk. They are the songs with which poor Jack seeks to enliven his toil.

And this appears in Chambers’s Journal of Popular Literature, Science and Arts on 11 December 1869. Many of the sentences are word for word as those in the 1868 article above, so it was likely written by the same person. Both articles are anonymous:

SAILORS’ SHANTIES AND SEA-SONGS
I once heard an old salt remark, that a good shanty was the best bar in the capstan; and he spoke truly. A good voice and a new and stirring chorus are worth an extra hand on board a merchantman, which, as a rule, is manned by the least possible number that the law allows, and often goes to sea short-handed, even according to the parsimonious calculations of its owners. The only way the heavier work can be done at all is by each mand doing his utmost at the same moment. This is regulated by the shanty, the true song of the “toilers of the sea.” It is not recreation; it is an essential part of the w[ork] on shipboard. It is the shanty that mast-heads the topsail-yards, when making sail; it starts and weighs the anchor; it brings down the main-tack with a will; it loads and unloads cargo; it keeps the pumps going; in fact it does all the work where unison and strength are required.

Discuss this post

Sources:

Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles, first edition (DCHP-1), pre-1967, s.v., shanty, n.

Hawley, Zerah. A Journal of a Tour through Connecticut, Massachusetts, New-York, the North Part of Pennsylvania and Ohio. New Haven: S. Converse, 1822, 31. Gale Primary Sources: Sabin Americana.

McLean, John. Notes of a Twenty-Five Years’ Service in the Hudson’s Bay Territory, vol. 1 of 2. London: Richard Bentley, 1849, 57–58. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

“On Shanties.” Once a Week, 2.31, 1 August 1868, 92. ProQuest Historical Periodicals.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. shanty, n.2, shanty, n.1.

“Sailor’s Shanties and Sea-Songs.” Chambers’s Journal of Popular Literature, Science and Arts, 11 December 1869, 794–95. ProQuest Historical Periodicals.

Smyth, W.H. The Sailor’s Word-Book. London: 1867.

Image credit: Anonymous, nineteenth century drawing.

hooker

January 15, 2021

Corlear’s Hook, Lower East Side of Manhattan, 1876

15 January 2021

Hooker is a slang term for a prostitute. We don’t know its origin with certainty, but there are two leading contenders, and the actual origin may very well be a combination of the two. Hooker is also a word with one of the more famous false etymologies.

The earliest known appearance of hooker in the sense of a prostitute is in the New York Transcript of 25 September 1835, which records a courtroom conversation:

Prisoner: [...] he called me a hooker.
Magistrate: What did you call her a hooker for?
Witness: ’Cause she allers hangs around the hook, your honner.

The hook here is a reference to Corlear’s Hook, a neighborhood on the lower east side of Manhattan, near what is now the Williamsburg Bridge. At the time, Corlear’s Hook was a well-known red-light district, as shown an 1839 pamphlet titled, Prostitution Exposed; or a Moral Reform Directory. Despite its title, the pamphlet is a guide for finding prostitutes, rather than an advocate for ending the practice. The author goes by the nom de plume of Butt Ender, and the publisher is For Public Convenience. Presumably, no one put their names on it for fear of being arrested for solicitation. It doesn’t use the word hooker, but it does describe Corlear’s Hook:

The Hook.—There are 32 houses of assignation in Walnut street and its vicinity, and 87 houses of prostitution of the most wretched description; frequented by sailors, &c.

Hooker appears again in another “sporting” New York newspaper, the Weekly Rake of 20 August 1842:

The rake wants to know. When are we to have a fresh importation of “hookers.” The stock is [...] pretty well used up. We want fresh hands at the bellow but don’t want fire.

The word appears in North Carolina in the papers of a Bryan Grimes of Chowan County, North Carolina on 18 November 1845. The book, Tarheel Talk, in which the use is recorded is not clear about the context, but it’s probably a letter by a T. Houghton to Grimes or a member of his family:

If he comes by way of Norfolk he will find any number of pretty Hookers in the Brick row not far from French's hotel.

It’s possible that hooker started as a label for ladies doing business in Corlear’s Hook and given New York City’s position as a travel destination and waypoint, the term spread outward from there.

The second likely origin is in an older slang word for a type of thief. The term dates to the sixteenth century as described by Thomas Harmon:

These hokers or Anglers be perillous and most wicked knaues, and be deriued or procede forth from the vpright men, they commonly goe in fréese yerkynes and gally sloppes, pointeth beneth the knée: these when they practise their pilfryng, it is al by night, for as they walk a day times from house to house to demaund charitie, thei vigilantly mark where, or in what place they may attayne to there pray, casting their eyes vp to euery window, wel noting what they sée ther, whether apparell or linnen, hanging neere vnto the sayde wyndows, and that wil they be sure to haue yt next night folowing, for they customably cary with them a staffe of v. or vi. foote long, in which, within one inch of yt top therof is a little hole bored through: in which hole they putte an yron hoke, and with the same they will pluck vnto them quikly any thing yt thei may reach therwith, which hoke in the day time they couertly cary about the[m], and is neuer sene or taken out till they come to the place where they worke their feat.

The 1725 New Canting Dictionary also records this sense, but adds that hooker is also used by grifters as the name of the person who lures a mark into the con:

ANGLERS, alias HOOKERS; the Third Order of Villains: Petty Thieves, who have a Stick with a Hook at the End, wherewith they pluck Things out of Windows, Grates, &c. Also those that draw People in to be cheated.

It’s very possible that this “luring” sense was extended to include prostitutes, who might very well be alluring. And it may be that oral use of hooker to mean a prostitute predates the red-light district of Corlear’s Hook by quite some time. If so, it’s also possible that the existing slang term became a play on words when the houses of Corlear’s Hook opened their doors for business. In that case, the Corlear’s Hook connection would be one of amplification and spread, rather than origin.

I can’t leave hooker without mention of General Joseph Hooker. The licentious behavior of this U.S. Civil War general is often given as the origin of the term. During his brief tenure as commander of the Union Army of the Potomac, the army’s camp followers were known as Hooker’s Division, and Charles Francis Adams, Jr., grandson and great-grandson of the presidents, describes Hooker’s headquarters thusly:

During the winter (1862-63), when Hooker was in command, I can say from personal knowledge and experience, that the Headquarters of the Army of the Potomac was a place where no self-respecting man liked to go, and no decent woman could go. It was a combination of barroom and brothel.

As we have seen, the slang use of hooker long predates the Civil War, so the general cannot be the term’s origin. But, as perhaps is the case with Corlear’s Hook, the general and his reputation no doubt amplified the term, bringing it to the vocabularies of thousands of soldiers.

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Sources:

Adams, Charles Francis. Charles Francis Adams, 1835-1915: An Autobiography. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1916, 161.

Butt Ender. Prostitution Exposed; or a Moral Reform Directory. New York: Published for Public Convenience, 1839, 29. Gale Primary Sources.

Eliason, Norman Ellsworth. Tarheel Talk: an Historical Study of the English Language in North Carolina to 1860. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina Press, 1956, 277. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2020, s.v. hooker, n.3, hooker, n.1.

Harmon, Thomas. A Caveat for Commen Cursetors Vulgarely Called Vagabones. London: Henry Middleton, 1573, sig. B4r–v. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

A New Canting Dictionary. London: Booksellers of London and Westminster, 1725, B2. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. hooker, n.1.

Quinion Michael. Port Out, Starboard Home: and Other Language Myths. London, Penguin, 2004, 152–53. HathTrust Digital Archive.

Photo Credit: Unknown photographer, 1876, New York Public Library.