[Ads-l] Sources for "Hooker" Etymythology

[Jonathan Lighter]

Shelby Foote's well known "The Civil War: Fredericksburg to Meridian"
(1963), p. 234, asserts it as fact.

The punning designation of Washington's red-light section as "Hooker's
Division" implies that the story arose during the Civil War. Some of those
unfamiliar with the word might well have assumed it had something to with
Joe Hooker.

However, Bell Irwin Wiley's painstaking (and formerly equally well known)
_The Life of Billy Yank_(1952), while mentioning "Hooker's Division," does
not appear to connect it to the general.

JL

JL

On Mon, Mar 12, 2018 at 11:00 AM, Shapiro, Fred <fred.shapiro at yale.edu>
wrote:

> There is a popular apocryphal etymology of the word "hooker" denoting a
> prostitute, deriving the term from Civil War general Joe Hooker.  I need to
> find some of the more prominent books or other sources espousing this
> etymythology.  Can anyone point me to such sources?
>
>
> Fred Shapiro
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



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