pumpkinstrokemarrow

Had an intriguing thought this morning, on reading that would be bombers are invited to think about the virgins waiting for them in Paradise when the going gets a bit rough, when the black clad troopers are baying at the door. It seems that the proper word for said virgins is 'hour', presumably not pronounced in the same way as our word of the same spelling, but presumably closely related to the word 'houris' with which I was already familiar. The intriguing thought was that the word could also be closely related to our 'whore', a word which for me has negative rather than positive charge.

Google neither confirmed nor denied the thought. The word 'whore' seems to come from our Anglo-Saxon rather than our Latin roots, but also a word with relatives in India, so quite an old word, which might well, it still seems to me, be linked to the houris in Paradise.

Further work in the OED clearly called for after breakfast.