The history of the word “gay” | The Gayly

Contents:

• MEANG OF GAY ENGLISH
• GAY (ADJ.)
• GAY (HOMOSEXUAL) AND GAY (HAPPY)
• GAY
• THE HISTORY OF THE WORD "GAY" [CLOSED]
• MEANG OF "GAY" THE ENGLISH DICTNARY
• GAY WATER, A NEW NNED CKTAIL, WANTS TO BE THE ANTI-BUD LIGHT
• GAY IN DIFFERENT LANGUAG
• THE HISTORY OF THE WORD “GAY”

MEANG OF GAY ENGLISH

) begs to appear psychologil wrg the late 1940s, evintly picked up om gay slang and not always easily distguished om the olr sense:After discharge A.

He was not happy at the farm and went to a Wtern cy where he associated wh a homosexual crowd, beg "gay, " and wearg female cloth and makp.

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. "A Gay Cat, " said he, "is a loafg laborer, who works maybe a week, gets his wag and vagabonds about huntg for another 'pick and shovel' job. 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.

McCook, "Tramps, " "The Public Treatment of Pperism, " 1893], but some acunts report certa olr tramps would domate a gay t and employ him as a sort of slave.

GAY (HOMOSEXUAL) AND GAY (HAPPY)

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.

GAY

Rawson ["Wicked Words"] not a male prostute g gay reference to male homosexuals (but also to female prostut) London's notor Cleveland Street Sndal of 1889.

[John Boswell, "Christiany, Social Tolerance, and Homosexualy, " 1980]As a teen slang word meang "bad, ferr, unsirable, " whout reference to sexualy, om (n. Tom Robson a Brish mician and sger, one of the first, if not the very first pop artist who did not disguise or hi his homosexualy om the general public.

Until then homosexual actors, micians, athlet or anyone the public eye had two choic life: to keep their homosexualy a secret, pecially om the media, or adopt the mannerisms and a of drs which were very mp but at the same time (ironilly) never admtg their sexual preferenc publicly. Tom Robson released a very succsful song entled (Sg if you're) Glad to be Gay, was the mid-70s, and I was still at a Catholic primary school when I remember que distctly hearg gay beg ed for the first time to unteract the BrEng rogatory terms such as: poofter, poof, queer, not normal, fairy and queen that were rife at the time. In the first verse, criciz the Brish police for raidg gay pubs for no reason at all, once homosexualy had been crimalized sce the 1967 Sexual Offenc Act.

THE HISTORY OF THE WORD "GAY" [CLOSED]

In the send verse, pots to the hypocrisy of Gay News beg prosecuted for obsceny stead of porn magaz like magaz Playboy or the tabloid The Sun which publish photographs of topls girls on Page 3. It also criciz the way homosexual people are portrayed other parts of the prs, pecially nservative newspapers News of the World and Sunday Exprs.

For me, a young child livg London at the time, the term gay (meang homosexual and not "happy") was ed much more equently by the media and the general public after the release of "Glad to be Gay".

MEANG OF "GAY" THE ENGLISH DICTNARY

It also helped that Tom Robson looked straight and was not the least mp, he did not f the stereotypil ia of how homosexuals looked and behaved. Perhaps the most monly touted one is that the morn e of gay  om a clippg of gayt, a slang term among hobos and erants meang a boy or young man who acpani an olr, more experienced tramp, wh the implitn of sexual favors beg exchanged for protectn and stctn.

The term was often ed disparaggly and dat to at least 1893, when appears the November issue of Century magaze:The gay-ts are men who will work for “very good money, ” and are ually the Wt the tumn to take advantage of the high wag offered to laborers durg the harvt disparagg sense n be seen this catn om the 10 Augt 1895 issue of Harper’s Weekly:The hobo is an exceedgly proud fellow, and if you want to offend him, ll him a “gay t” or a “poke-outer. ”And om Jack London’s The Road, published 1907, but this passage is a reference to 1892:In a more faiar parlance, gay-ts are short-horns, chechaquos, new chums, or tenrfeet.

A gay-t is a newer on The Road who is man-grown, or, at least, send possible explanatn is that the homosexual sense is an outgrowth of an earlier sense of gay meang addicted to pleasure, self-dulgent, or immoral.

GAY WATER, A NEW NNED CKTAIL, WANTS TO BE THE ANTI-BUD LIGHT

This sense dat to at least 1597 when appears John Payne’s Royall Exchange:Sum gay profsors (kepge secret mns) do love there wyu […] to avoy the early 20th century, the phrase “to go gay” was e, meang to adopt a hedonistic liftyle. 1795:Those bulli who live upon whor of fashn, affect the drs and airs of men of rank and fortune, and by stttg ocsnally by the si of a gay lady, add a nsequence to her and themselv, and duce the ignorant cully to thk that miss nfers her favours on gentlemen om Mary Robson’s 1799 The False Friend:“That’s not my bs, ” replied the bailiff.

GAY IN DIFFERENT LANGUAG

The lyrics do not explicly lk the word wh homosexualy, but they n be terpreted that way, pecially if sung by a man drag:It’s about a chap, perhaps you know, I’m told he is ‘Nobody’s be, ’But maybe you all knew that before, He’s a lively clerk a Dry-Goods Store.

Augt Dolph is his name, From Skiddy-ma-dk they say he me, He’s a handsome man and he’s proud and poor, This gay young clerk the Dry-Goods ’s easy to dismiss the homosexual implitns the song as a 21st century reterpretatn of a mid-19th century song, but the ia of the effemate store clerk was a popular subject of parody the 1860s. I love to loaf and lie about we nnot say wh certaty that Hays’s e of gay was tend to imply homosexualy, the parodic in of the effemate store clerk and the lk to Whman’s homosexualy is tantalizg. It is uncerta, however, if Ste’s e of gay  this se is a reference to lbianism or to the nventnal sense of gay meang happy:They, they learned ltle thgs that are thgs beg gay,..

Swoong wh as we are the reasonFor the “Neti” beg gay, We all wear a green penultimate le refers to the 1890s, which were monly lled the gay neti. ” There is no doubt that this 1929 age of gay is a reference to appears aga Charl Ford and Parker Tyler’s 1933 The Young and Evil:Gayt thg on two feet.

THE HISTORY OF THE WORD “GAY”

And the 1938 movie Brgg Up Baby, the character played by Cary Grant, when asked why he is wearg women’s clothg repli:Bee I jt went gay all of a that gog gay had an tablished sense of beg hedonistic. This le is probably a double entendre tend to slip past the term remaed slang wh the homosexual muny until the late 1960s, when the Stonewall rts and the rise of homosexual rights activism brought this sense of gay to wir ’s probably worth mentng that there is a false acronymic orig for gay floatg about, that stands for Good As You. However, early disfure among some homosexuals about the adoptn of gay to scribe themselv was based on the word's associatns both wh prostutn (sense A.

The subsequent more general currency of this sense has led some mentators to claim that this is now the domant sense of the word, and that gay s earlier meangs of ‘reee’ or ‘bright and showy’ nnot readily be ed today whout at least a sense of double entendre. Eher way, the ls people e the words, the ls others hear them and the ls faiar they fact, “antonym, ” “homonym, ” “homophone” and “homograph” n be eful, pecially if you don’t want to make the mistake of g “synonym” rrectly when you mean somethg different.

In morn English, gay has e to be ed as an adjective, and as a noun, referrg to the people, pecially to gay mal, and the practic and cultur associated wh homosexualy. By the end of the 20th century, the word gay was remend by major LGBT groups and style guis to scribe people attracted to members of the same sex. In this e, the word do not mean "homosexual", so n be ed, for example, to refer to an animate object or abstract ncept of which one disapprov.