Gay: Encyclopedia II - Gay - Etymology

Gay - Etymology

The word started to acquire sexual connotations in the late 17th century, being used with meaning "addicted to pleasures and dissipations". This was by extension from the primary meaning of "carefree": implying "uninhibited by moral constraints". By the late nineteenth century the term "gay life" was a well-established euphemism for prostitution and other forms of sexual behaviour that were perceived as immoral.

The first name Gay is still occasionally encountered, usually as a female name although the spelling is often altered to Gaye. (795th most common in the 1990 census according to [1]). It was also used as a male first name. The first name of the popular male Irish television presenter Gabriel Byrne was always abbreviated as "Gay", as in the title of his chat-show The Gay Byrne Show which ran until 1999. The "Gaity" was also a common name for places of entertainment. One of Oscar Wilde's favorite venues in Dublin was the Gaiety Theatre, first appearing there in 1884.

Gay - Etymology of the modern usage

The use of the term gay, as it relates to homosexuality arises an extension of the sexualised connotation of "carefree and uninhibited", implying a willingness to disregard conventional or respectable sexual mores. Such usage is documented as early as the 1920s. It was initially more commonly used to imply heterosexually unconstrained lifestyles, as for example in the once-common phrase "gay Lothario",[2] or in the title of the book and film The Gay Falcon (1941), which concerns a womanising detective whose first name is "Gay". Well into the mid 20th century a middle-aged bachelor could be described as "gay" without prejudice.

A passage from Gertrude Stein's Miss Furr & Mrs. Skeene (1922) is possibly the first traceable published use of the word to refer to a homosexual relationship, though it is not altogether clear whether she uses the word to mean lesbianism or happiness:

The 1929 musical Bitter Sweet by Noel Coward contains another use of the word in a context that strongly implies homosexuality. In the song "Green Carnation", four overdressed, 1890s dandies sing:

The song title alludes to Oscar Wilde, who famously wore a green carnation, and whose homosexuality was well known. However, the phrase "gay nineties" was already well-established as an epithet for the decade (a film entitled The Gay Nineties; or, The Unfaithful Husband was released in the same year). The song also drew on familiar satires on Wilde and Aestheticism dating back to Gilbert and Sullivan's Patience (1881). Because of its continuation of these public usages and conventions – in a mainstream musical – the precise connotations of the word in this context remains ambiguous.

Other usages at this date involve some of the same ambiguity as Coward's lyrics. Bringing Up Baby (1938) was the first film to use the word gay in apparent reference to homosexuality. In a scene where Cary Grant's clothes have been sent to the cleaners, he must wear a lady's feathery robe. When another character inquires about his clothes, he responds "Because I just went gay...all of a sudden!" [3] However, since this was a mainstream film at a time when the use of the word to refer to homosexuality would still be unfamiliar to most film-goers, the line can also be interpreted to mean "I just decided to do something frivolous".

The word continued to be used with the dominant meaning of "carefree", as evidenced by the title of the The Gay Divorcee (1934), a musical film about a heterosexual couple. It was originally to be called The Gay Divorce after the play on which it was based, but the Hays Office determined that while a divorcee may be gay, it would be unseemly to allow a divorce to appear so.

By the mid-century "gay" was well-established as an antonym for "straight" (respectable sexual behavior), and to refer to the lifestyles of unmarried and or unattached people. Other connotations of frivolousness and showiness in dress ("gay attire") led to association with camp and effeminacy. This range of connotation probably affected the gradual movement of the term towards its current dominant meaning, which was at first confined to subcultures. The subcultural usage started to become mainstream in the 1960s, when gay became the term predominantly preferred by homosexual men to describe themselves. Gay was the preferred term since other terms, such as "queer" were felt to be derogatory. "Homosexual" was perceived as excessively clinical: especially since homosexuality was at that time designated as a mental illness, and "homosexual" was used by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) to denote men affected by this "mental illness". The illness of homosexuality was removed from the DSM in 1973, but the clinical connotation of the word was already embedded in society.

By 1963, the word "gay" was known well enough by the straight community to be used by Albert Ellis in his book The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Man-Hunting. By 1968 mainstream audiences were expected to recognise the double entendre in the ultra-camp musical entitled Springtime for Hitler: a gay romp with Adolf and Eva in Berchesgarten — which formed part of the plot of the film The Producers. The camp implications of the concept were explicit in the ludicrous pastiche of Coward's style epitomised by the title song:

Gay - Syntax

Gay was originally used purely as an adjective ("he is a gay man" or "he is gay"). Gay can be also used as a plural collective-like noun: "Gays are opposed to that policy"; although this usage may be deprecated by some, it is common [4] particularly in the names of various organizations such as PFLAG: (Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) and COLAGE (Children of Lesbians and Gays Everywhere). It is sometimes used as a singular noun, as in "he is a gay", such as in its use by the Little Britain comedy character Daffyd Thomas (a gay man who believes himself "the only gay in the village" despite abundant evidence to the contrary).

Gay - Folk etymologies

It has been claimed that "gay" was derived as an acronym for "Good As You", but this is a backronym (based on a fake etymology).

Another folk etymology accrues to Gay Street, a small street in the West Village of New York City — a nexus of homosexual culture. The term also seems, from documentary evidence, to have existed in New York as a code word in the 1940s, where the question, "Are you gay?" would denote more than it might have seemed to outsiders.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Etymology", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki