I agree that the apostrophe is graceless

Two things I've learned about English by taking clases de espanol: (1) English ultimately cares little about form, and instead cares about practicality. This is why we use a crazy amount of idioms, abbreviations, incorporations from other languages, and the like. (2) Caused by this, English has way too many words with many meanings. Not only does the language not make much sense or follow much of any real rules, the confusion is expounded by new definition creation of words that already exist. This is one reason why I think it's better to create a new word in "hos" than to incorporate it into "hoes". The "-es" rule isn't that much of a rule in the first place (English hates rules), and using "hos" can help eliminate that confusion. The pronunciation is an issue, but I think it's less of one than laying multiple definitions on top of specific spellings.