Well my friend and I had gotten into a argument about whether people have been using the hoe for agricultural purposes or that there was a sense for the word hoe, and people were called "hoes" or seen as something like that. The idea came when I was trying to figure out why a hoe, and a hoe have the same name. I guessed its because a hoe is a tool used to help plant seed right? Well a hoe (as in person) is used to help plant seeds too (as in man).
But I assumed that the hoe (the tool), came before the hoe (as in the person). My friends argument was that people were populating with everyone so everyone was a hoe then. I said but I dont think they really had monogamous relationships because they had to populate to survive. You cant call them a hoe or a slut because nothing was really wrong or immoral about that.
This kinda is a serious debate to me. I wanted to know what do you think?
The origins of the two words are unrelated. Ho or hoe was originally (and still until fairly recently) a contraction of whore. The OED lists occurrences going back to the 1960s; in that period its origins were reflected by spelling it who' or whoe. Still in 1994 people were playing on its origins in phrases like "It's fat like a $20 ho sittin' on yo face", playing on whore - your and ho - yo.
"Hoe" meaning an agricultural tool has been around since the 1400s.
The term "hoe" as a tool has been around for many centuries. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, it existed in Middle English, meaning at least 600 years ago.
The word "ho" to refer to "whores" was actually invented by Eddie Murphy. Eddie Murphy did a skit on Saturday Night Live about being a "ho". Part of the whole joke of the skit was at first, when he said "ho", you didn't know what he was talking about, because he was deliberately exaggerating the way "whore" was pronounced by a certain segment of the population. Eventually, you understand that when he's saying "ho" he means "whore", and then the skit became even funnier. But the word quickly took on a life of its own and became used in common conversation. Here is the skit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7k4bOUD_JPU It first aired October 17, 1981.