Orig and meang of gaydar: by 1992, om gay + radar. ... See more.
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GAYDAR (N.)
* origin of the term gaydar *
As a surname, Philipp Gay), om Old French gai "joyful, happy; pleasant, agreeably charmg; forward, pert; light-lored" (12c. ; pare Old Spanish gayo, Portugue ga, Italian gajo, probably French loan-words). )) word gay by the 1890s had an overall tge of promiscuy — a gay hoe was a brothel.
GAYDAR
The meang of GAYDAR is the supposed abily to regnize through observatn or tun that a person is gay. * origin of the term gaydar *
The suggtn of immoraly the word n be traced back at least to the 1630s, if not to Chcer:But oure bed he was so sh and gay. Whan that he wol han my bele slang meang "homosexual" (adj. ) 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.
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.
WHERE DID THE TERM "GAYDAR" ORIGATE?
"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. Do you want to know where they got their moni (nickname) 'Gay Cat'? See, Kid, ts sneak about and scratch immediately after chummg wh you and then get gay (h).
That's why we ll them 'Gay Cats'. 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. 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.
THE TTH ABOUT ‘GAYDAR’
) was ed by homosexuals, among themselv, this sense at least sce 1920. 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.
Ayto ["20th Century Words"] lls attentn to the ambiguo e of the word the 1868 song "The Gay Young Clerk the Dry Goods Store, " by U. "Gay" (or "gai") is now wily ed French, Dutch, Danish, Japane, Swedish, and Catalan wh the same sense as the English.
[John Boswell, "Christiany, Social Tolerance, and Homosexualy, " 1980]As a teen slang word meang "bad, ferr, unsirable, " whout reference to sexualy, om 2000.