"Hooker" vs. "[r]accrocheuse"

[Wilson Gray]

Doug! "Hebes"!? Oh, wait. you mean Greek _Hebe_ with the English -s
plural added. Sorry.

-Wilson

On Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 9:04 PM, Douglas G. Wilson <douglas at nb.net> wrote:
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> Poster:       "Douglas G. Wilson" <douglas at NB.NET>
> Subject:      "Hooker" vs. "[r]accrocheuse"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 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.
>
> ----------
>
> 1823 (this ed.) [Glossary attached to Rabelais' works] <<FEMMES
> _publiques_, prostituées. On leur a donné les noms suivants:
> accrocheuses, alicaires, ambubayes, ....>>
>
> ----------
>
> "Accrocheuse" can naturally be glossed "hooker", as it is glossed (or
> close enough) in this work in English:
>
> ----------
>
> 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 ....>>
>
> ----------
>
> Was "accrocheuse" familiar to Anglophones? Apparently it was to one anyway:
>
> ----------
>
> 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.">>
>
> ----------
>
> Here are just a few dictionary entries to check the meaning:
>
> ----------
>
> 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.>>
>
> ----------
>
> 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:
>
> ----------
>
> 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.>>
>
> ----------
>
> 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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--
-Wilson
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