Gayly meaning
by Jordan Redman
Staff Writer
Do you know what the word gay really means?
The word gay dates advocate to the 12th century and comes from the Old French “gai,” sense “full of joy or mirth.” It may also relate to the Vintage High German “gahi,” sense impulsive.
For centuries, gay was used commonly in speech and literature to represent happy, carefree, bright and showy, and did not take on any sexual meaning until the 1600s.
At that time the essence of gay as carefree evolved to imply that a person was unrestrained by morals and prone to decadence and promiscuity. A prostitute might contain been described as a “gay woman” and a womanizer as a “gay man.”
“Gay house” was commonly used to refer to a brothel and, later, “gaiety” was used as a common name for certain places of entertainment.
In the 1890s, the legal title “gey cat” (a Scottish variant of gay) was used to describe a vagrant who offered sexual services to women or a young traveler who was new to the road and in the company of an older man.
This latter use suggests that the younger human was in a sexually submissive role and may be among the first times that gay was used implying a queer relationship.
In 1951, gay appeared in the
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 preliminary eighteenth century. William King in his satire The Toast (published 1732, revised 1736), referred to “Lesbians” as women who “loved Women in the matching Manner as Men love them”. During that century, references to “Sapphic lovers” and “Sapphist” meant a woman who liked “her have sex in a criminal way”. For centuries before that, comparing a gal to Sappho of Lesbos implied passions that were more than poetic.
Unfortunately we don’t realize the origins of the most frequent queerwords that became popular during the 1930s through 1950s – gay, dyke, faggot, queer, fairy. Dyke, meaning butch lesbian, goes assist to 1920s ebony American slang: bull-diker or bull-dagger. It might go endorse to the 1850s phrase “all diked out” or “all decked out”, interpretation faultlessly dressed – in this case, like a dude or “bull”. The word faggot goes back to 1914, when “faggots” and “fairies” were said to attend “drag balls”. Nels Anderson in
Glossary of Terms: LGBTQ
Definitions were drafted in collaboration with other U.S.-based LGBTQ society organizations and leaders. See acknowledgements section.
Additional terms and definitions about gender identity and gender expression, transgender people, and nonbinary people are available in the Transgender Glossary.
Are we missing a term or is a definition outdated? Email press@glaad.org
*NOTE: Inquire people what terms they use to describe their sexual orientation, gender self and gender utterance before assigning them a label. Outside of acronyms, these terms should only be capitalized when used at the beginning of a sentence.
LGBTQ
Acronym for lesbian, lgbtq+, bisexual, transgender, and queer. The Q generally stands for queer when LGBTQ organizations, leaders, and media use the acronym. In settings offering support for youth, it can also stand for questioning. LGBT and LGBTQ+ are also used, with the + added in recognition of all non-straight, non-cisgender identities. (See Transgender Glossary ) Both are acceptable, as are other versions of this acronym. The term “gay community” should be avoided, as it does not accuratel
It is of the least achievable concern to me what homosexuals do with one another in the privacy of their homes. They can play house, plot political strategies or couple anonymously--I really don't care. I'm not offended and I wouldn't experiment to stop them if I could. But I want the word "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, bright, exuberant, cheerful, sportive, merry, light-hearted, lively, showy and pleasant.
The Oxford English Dictionary requires an entire page to explain 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 few darker meanings and that some used it to mean "prostitute" or to describe someone addicted to social pleasure and dissipation, but on balance the word kept satisfactory company.
Milton wrote of "the queer motes that people the sunbeams." Wordsworth in his "Ode to Duty" claimed "a poet could not but be gay / in such a jocund company." The poet Joseph Addison wrote of "Gay