Whore/Ho/Slut

[Herb Stahlke]

To draw on another movie, in Sleepless in Seattle the
eight-year-old boy objects to his widowed father dating and refers
to the woman as a ho.  I think he means simply a woman that he
doesn't like.  I doubt that most eight-year-olds know what a whore
is.

Herb

>>> douglas at NB.NET 10/11/00 11:42AM >>>

I have often heard "whore"/"ho" (not necessarily distinct in
speech) and
"bitch" in the expanded sense of "woman [somewhat derogatory]"
from
speakers of various races (but of course mostly from males!).
The
transcription "ho" rather than "whore" presumably is originally
meant to be
"African-American" or perhaps "Southern" (experts, please correct
me!) --
but recently it is found, e.g., on the Web without any specific
ethnic or
regional context -- but it does seem to carry the expanded
meaning at least
in most cases, AFAIK. Other words -- e.g., "broad", "floozy" --
are also
used with an identical or very similar expanded meaning.

My point was that 'ho' in writing would generally not mean
specifically
'prostitute'. If I saw on a Web page a picture of a woman
captioned "a
good-looking whore" I would take it to mean that she was a
prostitute, but
if the caption read "a good-looking ho" (OR "a good-looking
broad") I would
take it as a rude or casual way of saying "a good-looking woman"
... even
in the absence of any information about the origin or ethnicity
of the
author. [BTW, I have seen this usage with "ho" from what seem to
be
European and Asian sources, as well as American.]

-- Doug Wilson