The history of the word “gay” | The Gayly

Contents:

• THE HISTORY OF THE WORD “GAY”
• WAS “DRAMA QUEEN” A GAY SLANG EXPRSN ORIGALLY?
• GAY (ADJ.)
• MANILA’S GOLN GAYS PROVE YOU’RE NEVER TOO OLD TO BE A QUEEN

THE HISTORY OF THE WORD “GAY”

Do you know what the word gay really means? The word gay dat back to the 12th century and om the Old French “gai, ” meang “full of joy or mirth. For centuri, gay was ed monly speech and lerature to mean happy, reee, bright and showy, and did not take on any sexual meang until the 1600s.

WAS “DRAMA QUEEN” A GAY SLANG EXPRSN ORIGALLY?

At that time the meang of gay as reee evolved to imply that a person was unrtraed by morals and prone to nce and promiscuy. A prostute might have been scribed as a “gay woman” and a womanizer as a “gay man. “Gay hoe” was monly ed to refer to a brothel and, later, “gaiety” was ed as a mon name for certa plac of entertament.

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. This latter e suggts that the younger man was a sexually submissive role and may be among the first tim that gay was ed implyg a homosexual relatnship.

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.

GAY (ADJ.)

I jt went gay.

” 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.

MANILA’S GOLN GAYS PROVE YOU’RE NEVER TOO OLD TO BE A QUEEN

Today, gay is a socially acceptable term for homosexual people.