How ‘Gay’ Came to Mean ‘Homosexual’

Contents:

• GAY (ADJ.)
• GAY
• THE HISTORY OF THE WORD “GAY”
• MEANG OF GAY ENGLISH
• GAY DICTNARY

GAY (ADJ.)

240]The associatn wh (male) homosexualy likely got a boost om the term gay t, ed as far back as 1893 Amerin English for "young hobo, " one who is new on the road, also one who sometim do jobs. Gay ts were severely and celly abed by "real" tramps and bums, who nsired them "an ferr orr of begs who begs of and otherwise preys upon the bum — as were a jackal followg up the kg of beasts" [Prof.

In "Soclogy and Social Rearch" (1932-33) a paragraph on the "gay t" phenomenon not, "Homosexual practic are more mon than rare this group, " and gey t "homosexual boy" is attted Noel Erske's 1933 dictnary of "Unrworld & Prison Slang" (gey is a Sttish variant of gay) "Dictnary of Amerin Slang" reports that gay (adj. See ‘Meang & e’ for fns, age, and quotatn 10occurrenc per ln words morn wrten English The earlit known e of the word homosexual is the 's earlit evince for homosexual is om 1891, the wrg of John Addgton Symonds, wrer and advote of sexual reform. 1891– Characterized by sexual or romantic attractn to, or sexual activy wh, people of the same sex; volvg or relatg to same-sex sire or sexual as an adjective and a noun, homosexual was for much of the first half of the 20th cent.

GAY

While the term is still ed many formal ntexts, om the 1960s onwards gay beme preferred by many same-sex oriented men, who regard homosexual as too formal and clil, or as beg associated wh a history of the treatment of homosexualy as a medil or psychiatric ndn and the crimalizatn of sex between men many jurisdictns.

89 7212000It is probably rrect to speak of homosexual animals or animal homosexualy, bee virtually nothg is known about the gnive aspects of sexualy nonhuman speci. Compare French homosexuel (1891, apparently after German), and German homosexuell, now the ual form (1878; 1898 also as noun) German adjective homosexual, along wh s noun e and several rivativ, was apparently first prted Das Gemeschädliche s § 143 s prssischen Strafgetzbuch (1869) 30, 54, and passim (by K. 1892) wh specific reference to male homosexualy are probably fluenced by folk-etymologil associatn of the first element wh classil Lat homo human beg, person, post-classil Lat also ‘adult male human beg’ (see homo n.

The word “gay” seems to have s origs around the 12th century England, rived om the Old French word ‘gai’, which turn was probably rived om a Germanic word, though that isn’t pletely known. Fast-forward to the 19th century and the word gay referred to a woman who was a prostute and a gay man was someone who slept wh a lot of women (ironilly enough), often prostut. In terms of the sexual meang of the word, a “gay man” no longer jt meant a man who had sex wh a lot of women, but now started to refer to men who had sex wh other men.

THE HISTORY OF THE WORD “GAY”

As such, was mon amongst the gay muny to refer to one another as “gay” s before this was a monly known fn (reportedly homosexual men were llg one another gay as early as the 1920s). Sce then, gay, meang homosexual male, has steadily driven out all the other fns that have floated about through time and of urse also has gradually begun supplementg the word ‘lbian’ as referrg to women who are homosexual.

Bee even mentng someone was a homosexual was so offensive at the time England, people who were thought to be gay were referred to as “sporty” wh girls and “artistic” for boys.

[only before noun] nnected wh people who are gaya gay club/barthe lbian and gay munythe gay and lbian sectn the bookstoreOxford Collotns Dictnaryverbsbelooksound…adverbopenlyphrasgay and lbianSee full entry. [not before noun] (slang, disapprovg, offensive) (ed pecially by young people) an offensive way to scribe somethg you fd borg, stupid or not attractive (parative gayer, superlative gayt) (old-fashned) happy and full of fungay lghterShe felt lighthearted and gay.

MEANG OF GAY ENGLISH

See also gaiety, gailyWord OrigMiddle English ( sense (4)): om Old French gai, of unknown whout thkg about the rults or effects of a particular actn See gay the Oxford Advanced Amerin DictnarySee gay the Oxford Learner's Dictnary of Amic EnglishCheck pronunciatn:. Chaddock's translatn of Krafft-Ebg's "Psychopathia Sexualis, " om German homosexual, homosexuale (by 1880, Gtav Jäger), om Greek homos "same" (see homo- (1)) + Lat-based sexual. Havelock Ellis, "Studi Psychology, " 1897]Sexual versn (1883, later simply versn, by 1895) was an earlier clil term for "homosexualy" English, said by Ellis to have origated Italian psychology wrg.

In the 1890s, the term “gey t” (a Sttish variant of gay) was ed to scribe a vagrant who offered sexual servic to women or a young traveler who was new to the road and the pany of an olr man. In 1951, gay appeared the Oxford English Dictnary for the first time as slang for homosexual, but was most likely ed this way “unrground” at least 30 years earlier. ” This le (ad-libbed by Grant) n be terpreted to mean that he was behavg a happy-go-lucky or lighthearted way but is accepted by many as the first e of gay to mean homosexual a mastream movie.

When gay is ed today to mean stupid or unsirable ( has only been ed this way sce the 1990s), rri wh a history of negative judgment and rigid ias about who or what is acceptable. The Concise New Partridge Dictnary of Slang says the adjective “queer” began to mean “homosexual” about 1914, mostly the Uned Stat, and not was “rogatory om the outsi, not om wh, ” a ht that was beg embraced as a self-scriptn even then. It lists “queer” this way: “[Slang] homosexual: general age, still chiefly a slang term of ntempt or risn, but lately ed as by some amics and homosexual activists as a scriptive term whout negative nnotatns.

GAY DICTNARY

Some sourc trace the first adoptn of “queer” as a posive self-label to the group Queer Natn, found the early 1990s as a radil anizatn to bat vlence agast homosexuals. From Middle English gay, om Old French gai (“joyful, lghg, merry”), ually thought to be a borrowg of Old Occan gai (“impetuo, lively”), om Gothic *?????? (*gaheis, “impetuo”), mergg wh earlier Old French jai ("merry"; see jay), om Frankish *gāhi;[1] both om Proto-Germanic *ganhuz, *ganhwaz (“sudn”). The sense of homosexual (first rerd no later than 1937 by Cary Grant the film Brgg Up Baby, and possibly earlier 1922 the poem "Miss Furr and Miss Skeene" by Gert Ste[6][7]) was shortened om earlier gay t ("homosexual boy") unrworld and prison slang, self first attted about 1935, but ed earlier for a young tramp or hobo attached to an olr one.