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The "Dictionary of American Slang" reports that gay (adj.) was used by homosexuals, among themselves, in this sense since at least 1920. for "young hobo," one who is new on the road, also one who sometimes does jobs. The association with (male) homosexuality likely got a boost from the term gay cat, used as far back as 1893 in Amer.Eng.
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Slang meaning “homosexual” (adj.) begins to appear in psychological writing late 1940s, evidently picked up from gay slang and not always easily distinguished from the older sense. The suggestion of immorality in the word can be traced back at least to the 1630s, if not to Chaucer: “But in oure bed he was so fressh and gay / Whan that he wolde han my bele chose.” The word gay by the 1890s had an overall tinge of promiscuity - a gay house was a brothel. Gay in its modern sense typically refers to men ( lesbian being the standard term for homosexual women), but in some contexts it can be used of both men and women. The word gay cannot be readily used unselfconsciously today in these older senses without sounding old-fashioned or arousing a sense of double entendre, despite concerted attempts by some to keep them alive. As a result, the centuries-old other senses of gay meaning either ‘carefree’ or ‘bright and showy,’ once common in speech and literature, are much less frequent. It is now the standard accepted term throughout the English-speaking world. Gay meaning ‘homosexual,’ dating back to the 1930s (if not earlier), became established in the 1960s as the term preferred by homosexual men to describe themselves.
Gay definition happy code#
The word began to be used as a way for queer people to communicate with each other without having to use the word homosexual or any other word that listeners or straight people may be able to interpret.įrom the video: “In an article for The New York Times called ‘The Decline and Fall of the H Word’ Professor George Chauncey notes that uses of ‘gay’ in queer communities often operated as a code so that people could express same-sex desire through language without being picked up on by others who would respond negatively to them.USAGE. But now GLAAD lists homosexual as an offensive term in their media reference guide supplementing gay as the appropriate stand-in.”Īround the mid-20th century, use of the word gay to describe homosexuality, primarily for men, became more common practice. The New York Times didn’t adopt the use of gay until 1987, although it still doesn’t use it in all contexts. “However, the shift to using gay in the common language took a bit longer. “The practice of considering queer desire and illness has been denounced by the American Psychological Association and the American Psychiatric Association since 19 respectively,” Bainbridge explains. Starting around the 16th century, some early meanings of gay included being “hedonistic” or “frivolous,” and in the 18th century, “gay houses” was another term for brothels (and not necessarily brothels where same-sex relations were happening). Another was ‘noble, fine and excellent.’ Another still was light-hearted.” When did the word gay become associated with sexuality?īefore the word gay was linked to same-sex attraction, it was actually just linked to sexuality in general, heterosexual or homosexual.
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“One meaning was to be fine or showily dressed. “I did a quick etymology rundown on the word gay and found some now rare and out-of-date uses that are also pretty cool,” says Danielle Bainbridge, who created a video (below) about the history of the word gay. These range from “a person being described as joyous” to also saying that something is “brightly colored.”īut there are also other, lesser-known meanings. Well, the word gay has a variety of uses that date back as far as the 13th century.