This is a guest post by David Morris, a sub-editor and former English language teacher who holds a master’s degree in applied linguistics. David has written a few posts for Strong Language and writes about language at his blog Never Pure and Rarely Simple.
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I stumbled across a website called Shit My Students Write,* on which teachers – it’s not specified what level – anonymously submit examples of their students’ writing. Most are of the type that used to be called “schoolboy howlers”. Sometimes the student’s intention is clear: “Hitler was a facetious dictator.” But I couldn’t figure out what was intended by the student who wrote:
My grandmother, when she was alive, was quite the grammar ho.
There are two possibilities. Either they really meant to write that, in which case what exactly did they mean? Or it’s a writing, typing, or autocorrect error for something else, in which case what?
In either scenario, grammar might be a mistake for grandma > gramma. In the first scenario, it is possible that the student naively understood ho to mean someone who is enthusiastic about some activity (contrast virgin, the someone who has never experienced some activity definition of which is widely recorded). The problem with this interpretation is that I can’t find any instance online of someone using ho to mean anything other than enthusiasm for sex, though there is a Pinterest board called Grammar Ho, which contains examples of “internet grammar”. The owner of the account doesn’t explain the name.
In the second scenario, I speculated that Gramarjo might be the name of an American Indigenous tribe, comparable to Navajo; for example, “My grandmother was quite the navy ho” (autocorrected from nava ho). Gramajo is a surname primarily found in Argentina, one bearer of which is commemorated in the Buenos Airean dish Revuelto Gramajo. The problem with this interpretation is that it really doesn’t fit into the sentence. My grandmother was a Gramajo makes sense, but My grandmother was quite the Gramajo doesn’t.
In the absence of any further context, it’s probably impossible to be sure of the intended meaning. The @stronglang Twitter account shared my query and received a number of suggestions, including enthusiastic about:
Maybe we need further context: My grandmother had posters of Otto Jespersen and Lord Randolph Quirk on her wall. She was a grammar ho. Or: My father’s family lived in Argentina. My grandmother was a grammar ho (Gramajo) and my grandfather was a guava (Guevara).
Further suggestions would be welcome.
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* The last post on Shit My Students Write is dated May 2019, so it seems to be inactive.
Strong Language 
I would guess a truncation (whether accidental or intentional) of “grammar hound”.
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I suspect it means “grammar nazi,” a term the student probably didn’t know.
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It’s hard to say without context, but maybe the author’s grandmother was just a stickler for grammar?
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=grammar%20whore
But even if this was the intended meaning, it’s probably not appropriate to use in a school assignment.
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Another vote for a nazi analogy, though I don’t buy it myself:
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Coincidentally, I encountered a reference to a Vietnamese person whose name contained ‘Bich Ho’.
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Coming back to this in 2023, I think I have the answer.
It’s not uncommon in online slang for sexual terms to be extended to mean nonsexual enjoyment. For example, “food porn” or “eargasms.”
Specifically there’s “art hoe,” a neutral term describing an art enthusiast. Urban Dictionary has several entries for the term; the earliest dates back to March 2015, and an August 2015 entry claims that it was coined by Tumblr user sensitiveblackperson.
“Grammar hoe” (note the spelling) I can find in a few sources, mostly Tumblr posts from 2016 or so like this post:
So it’s likely derived from “art hoe,” but doesn’t seem particularly widespread.
I wouldn’t be surprised if some people used it as an alternative to “Grammar Nazi,” but it’s really not widespread enough to draw any conclusions there.
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