People or things that catch or fasten with hooks; in sports, players in specific positions; informally, people who engage in sex work.
From Old Norse 'hókr' meaning hook, plus the agent suffix '-er' and plural '-s'. The sports meaning comes from the shape of the playing position, while the slang meaning developed in the 19th century from the idea of 'hooking' clients.
In rugby, hookers wear the number 2 and literally 'hook' the ball with their foot during scrums—one of the few words where the metaphor perfectly matches the job description on the field.
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