What did gay used to mean
It is of the least possible worry to me what homosexuals do with one another in the privacy of their homes. They can play property, plot political strategies or couple anonymously--I really don't look after. I'm not offended and I wouldn't try to cease them if I could. But I want the synonyms "gay" back. "Gay" used to be an extremely useful word. It showed up frequently in poetry and prose--Shakespeare used it 12 times--in part because it has no precise synonym. The general sense of the word is a combination of joyous, mirthful, shiny, exuberant, cheerful, sportive, merry, light-hearted, lively, showy and pleasant.
The Oxford English Dictionary requires an entire page to clarify the etymology and nuances of "gay" as it has appeared in literature throughout history. The citations show that during the 1600s it began to acquire a not many darker meanings and that some used it to denote "prostitute" or to describe someone addicted to social pleasure and dissipation, but on balance the word kept pleasant company.
Milton wrote of "the gay motes that people the sunbeams." Wordsworth in his "Ode to Duty" claimed "a poet could not but be male lover / in such a jocund company." The poet Joseph Addison wrote of "Gay
Today I found out how ‘gay’ came to mean ‘homosexual’.
The word “gay” seems to have its origins around the 12th century in England, derived from the Old French word ‘gai’, which in turn was probably derived from a Germanic synonyms, though that isn’t completely known. The word’s original sense meant something to the effect of “joyful”, “carefree”, “full of mirth”, or “bright and showy”.
However, around the in advance parts of the 17th century, the word began to be associated with immorality. By the mid 17th century, according to an Oxford dictionary definition at the age, the meaning of the word had changed to mean “addicted to pleasures and dissipations. Often euphemistically: Of loose and immoral life”. This is an extension of one of the unique meanings of “carefree”, meaning more or less uninhibited.
Fast-forward to the 19th century and the pos gay referred to a woman who was a prostitute and a lgbtq+ man was someone who slept with a lot of women (ironically enough), often prostitutes. Also at this hour, the phrase “gay it” meant t
The History of the Word 'Gay' and other Queerwords
Lesbians may have a longer linguistic history than gay men. Contrary to the incomplete information given in the OED, the word lesbian has meant “female homosexual” since at least the early eighteenth century. William King in his satire The Toast (published 1732, revised 1736), referred to “Lesbians” as women who “loved Women in the same Manner as Men love them”. During that century, references to “Sapphic lovers” and “Sapphist” meant a female who liked “her own sex in a criminal way”. For centuries before that, comparing a woman to Sappho of Lesbos implied passions that were more than poetic.
Unfortunately we don’t know the origins of the most common queerwords that became popular during the 1930s through 1950s – gay, dyke, faggot, queer, fairy. Dyke, meaning butch lesbian, goes back to 1920s black American slang: bull-diker or bull-dagger. It might go support to the 1850s phrase “all diked out” or “all decked out”, meaning faultlessly dressed – in this case, like a man or “bull”. The pos faggot goes back to 1914, when “faggots” and “fairies” were said to attend “drag balls”. Nels Anderson in
How ‘gay’ got its rainbow: What once meant merry is now a badge of identity for homosexuals
On Thursday, as the Supreme Court decriminalised homosexuality, reading down the controversial British-era section 377 of the penal code, Mumbai-based Arnab Nandy took to social media to express his joy, as many across the country and the world were doing. “I am so Gay today…” he wrote in a coming-out post that has since gone viral. But while Nandy’s choice of word was bang on that day, how did a word that had originally meant light-hearted, carefree or cheerful, become paired with a community whose life has been often been anything but?
The Oxford English dictionary traces the history of the pos ‘gay’ to the French word Gai. Merriam Webster takes it further advocate to a Germanic start “akin to the Aged High German Gahi” that meant “quick or sudden”. According to both dictionaries, in English the utilize of ‘gay’ to represent happy, excited, merry, carefree or bright started in the Middle English period that stretches between the 12th and the 16th century.
All For An Identity
While some books and websites on the history of the global lesbian movement claim the pos gay was used as