FOR reasons which needn't for the moment concern us, the column two weeks ago spent some time with the oldest profession and thus caught Martin Birtle with his etymological trousers down.

Martin, from Billingham, enjoyed a holiday this summer touring American Civil War battlegrounds. "The courier told us that one of the military leaders was General Whore, a man so fond of prostitutes that his name entered the language," he recalled.

A short period of incredulity was followed by a decorous rummage through Cassell's Dictionary of Word Histories, which finds full-time employment on these shelves. "Whore", it said, was pre-12th century and with Latin roots.

Mr Birtle, a gentleman of high repute, made his excuses and left. "The courier must have been pulling our legs," he said, but rang back an hour later.

"I've just checked with my wife," he said. "It wasn't General Whore, it was General Hooker."

JOSEPH Hooker (1814-79) was indeed a military man, though the nickname "Fighting Joe" is said to have come about because of a journalistic error in transmission - someone omitted a dash between "fighting" and "Joe".

Popular with his men but over-critical of his superiors, he is said to have had a headquarters which resembled a cross between a bar and a brothel. His talk was as loose as his lady friends.

One of the websites reckons him among the most immodest and most immoral of high Union commanders, the term "hooker" first used to describe the females who in large numbers, followed his camp from Washington.

Before the column is accused of being similarly close to the bed and bawdy line, however, our position should be made clear. This is the general knowledge section, that's all.

THE reader who prefers simply to be known as That Bloody Woman suggests that we invite collective nouns for those who thus indulge - though what could be better, as she herself suggests, than a jam of tarts and an anthology of pro's?

THE original Happy Hooker was Xaviera Hollander, an American madame who in the 1970s, published an autobiography under that title.

Now in Holland, she remains in what might be termed the hospitality industry, though her website - with thanks to John Briggs in Darlington - is properly coy.

"Internationally renowned author, legend, icon, theatrical entrepreneur, the Happy Hooker herself will entertain you as a guest in her own home and in her inimitable and unforgettable style," it says, adding that the "internationally trained" staff will cater for every need.

It costs 120 euros a night, bed and breakfast. Fifty per cent deposit; no credit cards, please.

TEN days after all this began, Martin Birtle was watching University Challenge when St John's, Cambridge ("rubbish throughout") were asked to name the American general who graduated from West Point in 1903, became commandant there in 1919 and 26 years later, received the Japanese surrender in Tokyo.

After much indecision, says Martin, they came up with Custer. "Even Jeremy Paxman was lost for words by that one."

WHAT really started it all, the columnar come-on, was a suggestion that Pink Lane in Newcastle city centre was so named because it was a haunt of pinks - otherwise punks, and long before Johnny Rotten gave them a worse name.

The Daily Telegraph letters column has also taken things lying down, a reader citing The Merry Wives of Windsor - "That punk is one of Cupid's carriers," said Pistol, and A-level English unnecessary for the translation.

Among the newer trends are the goths, "goth" defined in the Bloomsbury English Dictionary (2004) both as "an uncivilised or barbaric person" and "a style of fashion, popular among men and women in the 1980s, characterised by black clothes, heavy silver jewellery, black eye make-up and often pale face make-up".

Fashionably familiar most weekends around Old Eldon Square, in Newcastle, they also held their bi-annual Whitby convention last weekend, the essential Bram Stoker connection prompting yesterday's Backtrack column to describe it as "a sort of Drac and white minstrel show".

The Oxford declines any modern allusions, simply identifying a Goth as one of a pretty frightful Germanic tribe between the third and fifth centuries and inviting comparison with the Vandals, who were no less horrible and every bit as Germanic.

As if anxious to befriend their visitors, the Whitby Gazette invariably refers to the latter day invaders as goths - lower case g. A two pint debate in the pub at the weekend concluded that they're right.

RUDYARD Kipling came into here somewhere, too, prompting the earlier recollection (also from Martin Birtle) that at Billingham in the 1960s, his Lancastrian headmaster insisted that form rooms be called "kiplings" - a Lancashire term, apparently, for "piece" or "part".

Up in Sunniside, County Durham, Paddy Burton has a copy of The Lanky Twang, written by the same chap who articulated The Yorkshire Yammer, but without reference to kipling. "Clippin" - as in proggy mats - may be nearest.

Both books, incidentally, were published by Dalesman in Clapham, at various times in both Yorkshire and Lancashire but when last heard of, firmly in North Yorkshire - but "via Lancaster", of course.

Peter Sotheran, bell ringer and Redcar elder, reckons that "kipling" is also a term in the esoteric language of campanology - "one of the methods involved in working out some of the quite difficult mathematical convolutions".

Why kipling? Because, adds Peter, it's ruddy 'ard.

...and finally, since recent columns have also been perusing the newer dictionaries, Chris Eddowes in Hartlepool draws attention to the 400th anniversary of the very first English dictionary, published by a schoolmaster called Robert Cawdry. A note on the title page explained what it was all about:

"A Table Alphabeticall, conteyning and teaching the true writing and understanding of hard vsuall English wordes, borrowed from the Hebrew, Greeke, Latine or French &c with the interpretation thereof by plain English words, gathered for the benefit and helpe of Ladies, gentlewomen or any other unskilful persons, whereby they may the more easily and better understand many hard English wordes which they shall hear or reade in Scriptures, Sermons or elsewhere, and also be made able to vse the same aptly themselves."

Chris, herself a teacher, looks askance at the bit about Ladies, gentlewomen and unskilful persons. As politically correct as always, the column returns next week.

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