GAY | fn the Cambridge English Dictnary

Contents:

• GAY (ADJ.)
• THE HISTORY OF THE WORD “GAY”
• GAY
• GAY (HOMOSEXUAL) AND GAY (HAPPY)
• THE ORIGS OF THE WORD ‘GAY’
• THE ORIG OF THE WORD ‘GAY’ S HOMOSEXUAL NTEXT
• MEANG OF GAY ENGLISH

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.

THE HISTORY OF THE WORD “GAY”

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.

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 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.

GAY

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. 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.

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.

GAY (HOMOSEXUAL) AND GAY (HAPPY)

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,.. 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.

THE ORIGS OF THE WORD ‘GAY’

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. In May, the Temecula Valley Unified School District’s board voted 3 to 2 to reject a new curriculum that clud discsns on the gay rights movement and mentned Harvey Milk, the first out gay man elected to public office California. That same year, Pieters beme a natnal spokperson for AIDS awarens and gay polil activism after his historic terview wh televangelist Tammy Faye on her broadst, which fied the work's homophobic tennci.

THE ORIG OF THE WORD ‘GAY’ S HOMOSEXUAL NTEXT

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 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.

MEANG OF GAY ENGLISH

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".

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.

2003, Michael McAvennie, The World Wrtlg Entertament Yearbook:She uldn't even ga accs om a fay iend whose name was on the list, nor uld she e her feme charms to turn on the staff member, who revealed he was gay and was more imprsed seeg Billy and Chuck enter the buildg. 2005, Mark Caldwell, New York Night, page 133:Of the dozen or so survivg articl, squibs, and letters to the edor, the most remarkable appeared the Whip and Satirist’s Febary 12, 1842, issue, and disclosed the existence of a bal of gay men New York's otherwise wholome nightspe of brothels and rts. Among the syndite of perverts, the wrer announced, "we fd no Amerins as yet—they are all Englishmen or French" (the English lled homosexualy the French vice and the French the English vice; for the Whip was the French and English vice).

The two failed attempts to receive the necsary accs to medilized transn procr by the renowned FTM activist Lou Sullivan—a gay man who refed to ply wh the imperative that transsexual men mt sire women— […].

2010, Noėl Sturgeon, Environmentalism Popular Culture: Genr, Race, Sexualy, and the Polics of the Natural, page 128:In fact, as several letter wrers to the New York Tim poted out their rponse to the article, the disjuncture between the two popularized pengus shows how radilly separated om each other are muni of gay people and muni of right-wg relig nservativ: if the Christian fundamentalists had looked up "gay pengus" or even "pengus" on the Inter, they would have enuntered several gay pengu s, cludg the story of Roy and Silo, the Central Park Zoo gay pengu uple about whom a children's book was wrten; the saga of the gay pengu muny at a German zoo; and the mpaign of Gay Pengu for Print (whose slogan was "Gee W.

1977, Charl Silverste; Edmund Whe, The Joy of Gay Sex, New York: Crown Publishers, →ISBN, page 162:Gays meet each other special-tert social groups—gay softball leagu, gay bike clubs, gay gymnasia, gay activist polil anizatns, the Gay Amic Unn (an anizatn for gay teachers, scholars and stunts), gay universy stunt clubs and so on. 2003, Lawrence Block, Small Town, page 269:He might well have spected Cheek was a gay bar whout seeg any of s patrons, simply bee was a neighborhood where most of the bars were gay, and bee you uldn't see the wdows.