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Trivia: Strangest bus stop names.
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BeijingDave
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Ho' is really a comparatively recent term of abuse adopted from the inner cities of the USA. To anyone my age (40s) or older, the first time we heard the word hoe was in most cases when our parents were gardening.
joieman
Member
I probably didn't know about the pejorative sort of hoe until my late teens, so I'd say that even for younger people that interpretation isn't necessarily universal.
If you think the 15th century is comparatively recently, yes - it existed in middle English, long before the US was so popular.
BeijingDave
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'Whore' was of course in use then.
'Ho' (a contraction of 'whore') sounding very similar to (garden) 'hoe' is American slang, probably LA or New York origin.
I do stand to be corrected, but I'm fairly confident people in 15th century England weren't calling promiscuous women 'Hos' like a Compton Crip.
NB Street names were a lot more vulgar back then, and any 'Grape Street' in an old English city was usually a renaming of 'Grope' or even 'Gropec*nt' Street/Lane (where the prostitutes would have once hung out) by later prudes.
== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: ==
Wiki is not the greatest source, but will do in this case:
Grape Lane - Wikipedia
Bristol also had a Hoor Street (note pronunciation is closer to 'whore' than 'ho').
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EYFanatic
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One can only wonder about the NatEx stop of Westward Ho!
SargeNpton
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Westward Ho! is a village in north Devon with a population of around 2,100. It takes its name from the Westward Ho!-tel and accompanying holiday villas, around which the village grew.
The hotel in turn takes its name from the 1855 Westward Ho! Novel by Charles Kingsley.
The village is the only settlement in the UK to have an exclamation mark in its name and, as far as I can tell, the only one to be named after a work of fiction.
Though the town of Nelson is named after a pub.
Wikipedia seems remarkably vague about when Street naming ceased to be “what people called the Road” and became “what the Road is called on a map / official register”. A few of those double names must still exist (everyone calls it “x” though its official name is “y”) - though the last one I’m aware of coming across was Reading’s “Smelly Alley” - does that name still survive?
EYFanatic
Member
I am aware but given what @Beijingsaid about the etymology, i thought it was a good joke
Fairly sure Jon from Auto Shenanigans has a video on this exact topic. How the devil are you, hope you've had a good week etc.'Whore' was of course in use then.
'Ho' (a contraction of 'whore') sounding very similar to (garden) 'hoe' is American slang, probably LA or New York origin.
I do stand to be corrected, but I'm fairly confident people in 15th century England weren't calling promiscuous women 'Hos' like a Compton Crip.
NB Street names were a lot more vulgar back then, and any 'Grape Street' in an old English city was usually a renaming of 'Grope' or even 'Gropec*nt' Street/Lane (where the prostitutes would have once hung out) by later prudes.
== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: ==
Wiki is not the greatest source, but will do in this case:
Grape Lane - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
Bristol also had a Hoor Street (note pronunciation is closer to 'whore' than 'ho').