Gay (word): Difference between revisions
imported>Hayford Peirce (I think we ought to have the name of the article in the first sentence; reminor rewriting to remove second person usage) |
imported>Hayford Peirce (changed "somebody" to "someone"; unless someone objects, I will change back the "poetic" sentence that Larry thinks is better than the present denatured one -- I agree with him) |
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Originally meaning carefree, happy, brightly coloured, or pleasure-loving, in contemporary usage '''gay''' is widely used as a synonym for homosexuality, i.e. being sexually attracted to | Originally meaning carefree, happy, brightly coloured, or pleasure-loving, in contemporary usage '''gay''' is widely used as a synonym for homosexuality, i.e. being sexually attracted to someone of the same gender. | ||
==Etymology== | ==Etymology== | ||
Revision as of 11:50, 15 November 2007
Originally meaning carefree, happy, brightly coloured, or pleasure-loving, in contemporary usage gay is widely used as a synonym for homosexuality, i.e. being sexually attracted to someone of the same gender.
Etymology
The ancient origins of "gay" are uncertain, with some etymologists tracing it to the Old High German gâhi ("swift"), though recent research supports wâhi ("pretty") as a more likely source. The Oxford English Dictionary (2nd edition) also notes that the sense ‘slack, not closely fitting’, which can be found in all the Romance languages (although not at an early date) may also be of etymological significance. [1]
Its oldest meaning in English, attested as early as 1310, is "disposed to joy and mirth", and this was the dominant meaning until the 20th Century. Its use as a reference to homosexuality is not noted in dictionaries until 1935, when the word "geycat" was cited as prison slang for a homosexual boy; with the independent form "gay" first appearing in 1951.[2] There are however earlier instances of the use of the word "gay" to imply homosexuality, for example in 1889 the Cleveland Street Scandal in London, it was applied to a club in the East End of London which employed male prostitutes.[3]
Although early usages were generally strongly pejorative, in the wake of what could be described as the gay liberation movement in the second half of the 20th Century the word began to be used in a purely descriptive sense, with the added implication that homosexuality was not something that warranted any sort of stigma.
Cultural history
The English word "gay" was applied to stylish objects as well as to people; it is, for instance, used to refer to various accoutrements of the Canterbury pilgrims by Geoffrey Chaucer, e.g. the Knight's Yeoman was said to have a "gay dagerre." The word is a close relative of the Middle French and Provençal words gaya and gai, meaning, roughly, "joyful." Occitanian poets defined their poetic craft as lo gai saber, or the "joyful knowledge," and the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche used this phrase as the title of his book, Das Fröliche Wissenschaft (1882), generally translated as "The Gay Science."
The shift towards an exclusively homosexual meaning is reflected in such compound usages as gay-friendly or gay-bashing, and gaydar (a homophonic pun on radar, referring to the supposed ability of gay men to detect other gay men. In the early twenty-first century the meaning of the word "gay" has continued to evolve, becoming in youth parlance a synonym for "silly" or "ridiculous".
References
- ↑ Oxford English Dictionary, gay, a., adv., and n., retrieved 7/28/2007.
- ↑ Oxford English Dictionary, gay, a., adv., and n., retrieved 7/28/2007.
- ↑ Hugh Rawson, Wicked Words, NY: Crown, 1989 ISBN 0517573342