in rugby, a player stationed in the middle of the front row of the scrum
this position
informal a woman prostitute
Two popular theories are proposed about the origin of hooker meaning ‘prostitute’. First, it is alleged to have referred originally to women thronging the camp of Joseph Hooker, a Federal general in the US Civil War, whose headquarters in Washington, DC, had an unsavoury reputation. This theory is disproved by the appearance of the word in 1845, predating the Civil War by more than a decade. Secondly, it supposedly derives from Corlear's Hook, a red-light district of New York City in the 19th cent. There is no firm evidence to support this suggestion. More likely, the word simply suggested a woman ‘hooking’ or catching hold of a man