"Hooker" vs. "[r]accrocheuse"

[Douglas G. Wilson]

As noted recently, one popular hypothesis regarding the origin of
"hooker" = "prostitute" takes "hooker" to originally mean "one who
hooks" with "hook" meaning "seize" or "entrap" or so. Is this semantic
development plausible? Perhaps one can get some guidance from French.
"Hook" (verb) can be glossed "accrocher" in French. Do we see
"accrocheuse" or the like in French meaning "prostitute" or so? We
surely do. I don't know whether anybody has pointed out this parallel
previously.

"Accrocheuse" is the first entry in that well-known glossary appended to
Rabelais' works back in the day.

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1823 (this ed.) [Glossary attached to Rabelais' works] <<FEMMES
_publiques_, prostituées. On leur a donné les noms suivants:
accrocheuses, alicaires, ambubayes, ....>>

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"Accrocheuse" can naturally be glossed "hooker", as it is glossed (or
close enough) in this work in English:

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1898 [Interpretations of the above glossary] <<ACCROCHEUSES
(man-hookers) -- ALICAIRES (Hebes, so-called because in ancient Rome
they used to offer wine to their clients)-- AMBUBAYES ....>>

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Was "accrocheuse" familiar to Anglophones? Apparently it was to one anyway:

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1857 [quoting a letter to the _Times_, inveighing against the opera]
<<"... in the 'Rigoletto,' the public are all but made to witness the
sequel to a rape, and through nearly an entire act they have revealed to
them the lewd dalliance of an accrocheuse de la rue.">>

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Here are just a few dictionary entries to check the meaning:

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1735 [Le Roux dictionary] << _Accrocheuse_. Pour putain, femme de
mauvaise vie, maquerelle qui court la nuit les rues pour accrocher les
passans, & pour les attirer dans de mauvais lieux.>>

1801 [French-German dictionary] <<ACCROCHEUSE ... eine Kupplerinn.>>

1813 [French-Swedish dictionary] <<Accrocheuse ... Kopplerska.>>

1836 [French-German 'proverbial' dictionary] <<_Accrocheuse_: Elle est
une _accrocheuse_ finie. Sie ist eine ausgemachte Gassen-Läuferin.>>

1856 [German-French dictionary] <<Standhure f. (welche an einem
bestimmten Orte ihren Stand hat) b. accrocheuse f.>>

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It seems to me that the meaning is basically a prostitute who recruits
customers on the street to 'take home', with extension to street-walking
prostitutes, to prostitutes in general, and in the other direction to
[public] procuresses. (This matches particularly well the context in
HDAS's 1865 "hooker" citation.)

More frequent is the apparently equivalent word "raccrocheuse" (which
can be glossed "rehooker", I suppose, although in my crass ignorance of
French I am not quite sure how the "re-" should be interpreted here).
Here are a few entries (there are plenty more at G-Books) to check the
meaning:

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1798 [Dictionnaire de l'Académie française, 5th ed.] <<RACCROCHEUSE,
sub. fémin. se dit d'Une fille de mauvaise vie qui raccroche les
passans.>> <<On dit familièrement, Raccrocher, En parlant Des filles de
mauvaise vie, qui pressent les passans d'entrer chez elles.>>

1813 [French-Italian dictionary] <<RACCROCHEUSE ... Sgualdrina.>>

1817 [French-Spanish dictionary] <<Raccrocheuse ... Ramera: muger de
mala vida, que detiene á los hombres para brindarlos con su casa.>>

1827 [French-English dictionary] <<RACCROCHEUSE ... bawd, procuress.>>

1830 [French-English dictionary] <<RACCROCHEUSE ... A common strumpet.>>

1843 [Danish-French dictionary] <<Hore ... putain, garce, paillarde,
fornicatrice; raccrocheuse>>

1844 [German-French dictionary] <<Gassen-dirne ... coureuse, raccrocheuse>>

1858 [French-English dictionary] <<RACCROCHEUSE ... street-walker.>>

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If such a person could be called "[r]accrocheuse" in French, then I
reckon she could naturally be called "hooker" in English by parallel
semantic development. No need for Gen. Hooker or Corlear's Hook.

One more stroke of Occam's razor: maybe this English "hooker" in fact
originated as a plain calque of "[r]accrocheuse": why not?

-- Doug Wilson

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