Re: query: distorted languages?

Kou wrote:
"These seem dissimilar examples to me. While I don't know all the ins and
outs of the etymology of "gay", I should think this is just lexical shift."

Padraic responded:
"Partly.  The word actually acquired the sense "homosexual" as early as
the 1940's, where "gay" is recorded as prison slang for "homosexual".
It merely remained out of the mainstream until the 1970's.  But, once
the meaning "homosexual" had entered mainstream English, *then* it
quickly ceased to be used for "happy"."

    My first exposure to "the word" came from watching the American cartoon
series "The Flintstones," as it occurs in the theme song: "Have a yabba,
dabba, doo time/ A dabba doo time/ We'll have a gay, old time!"  I'm not
sure what it all means, although Barney and Fred were awfully chummy at
times...
        I have heard plenty of folk etymologies... my favorite states that bars in
London (or New York, or anywhere else in the English speaking world) which
catered to a homosexual clientele would advertise "a gay time" in their
windows.  Hence the word became associated with the bars, and, by extension,
their clientele.  I don't know what value, if any, this etymology has.  So I
researched some authorities to find what other, ahem, "alternatives"
existed.

        In Eric Partridge's _A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English_, he
notes that "the word was first published in the O.E.D. in 1825 but was in
circulation well before that date. It referred to women who lead "a harlot's
life." Nearly all colloquial usages link "gay" to sex and, interestingly, to
either the sexuality of a whore or to feeling amorous or having sex with "a
woman of ill repute." In 1860, "to lead a gay life" meant to live by
prostitution.  "The gaying instrument," again 19th-century slang, refers to
the phallus; and "to gay it" refers to sexual intercourse."

Here's what Dave Wilton has to say about the whole mess:
        "Much commentary about this adjective referring to homosexuals exists,
mostly having to do with usage. Our concern here, however, is etymology and
two mistaken notions prevail. The first is that gay meaning homosexual
originated as an acronym for Good As You. The second is that it is of
relatively recent origin, dating only to the late 1960s. Both of these ideas
are in error.

        Many, Bryson among them, believe that gay came to mean homosexual only in
the late 1960s with the Stonewall riot and the rise of the gay rights
movement. This is not the case. The error these people are making is
confusing the adoption of the term by the heterosexual
community, and thus the English language as a whole, with its origin. The
term is in fact much older, being used by homosexuals to refer to themselves
with certainty as early as the 1930s, and possibly as early as the 1860s.

        Lighter gives the earliest usage cite as a 1922 quote from Gertrude Stein's
"Miss Furr & Mrs. Skeene" which appeared in Vanity Fair. It is uncertain,
however, if Stein's use of gay in this case is a reference to lesbianism or
to the [then] conventional sense of gay meaning happy:

        They were ... gay, they learned little things that are things in being gay,
... they were quite regularly gay.

        The first unequivocal written use of gay to mean homosexual is in 1933 in
Ford and Tyler's Young & Evil. In 1938 in the movie Bringing Up Baby, the
character David, played by Cary Grant, when asked why he is wearing women's
clothing replies, "Because I just went gay all of a sudden." In retrospect,
this is probably a joke slipped in by the screenwriters intended to slip
past the censors. In their 1941 book Sexual Variations, Gershon Legman and
G.V. Henry cite gay as a slang term for homosexual, which indicates that it
was in use for some time
prior.

        Lighter also cites the 1983 Gay/Lesbian Almanac by J. Katz as referencing
an 1868 song by female impersonator Will S. Hays entitled, "Gay Young Clerk
in the Dry Goods Store." Being 125 years after the fact, this reference is
suspect, and even if the song ever actually existed, the meaning of the term
gay in the title would be uncertain unless the lyrics turned up.

        OK, so gay was in use in the 1930s, and perhaps earlier, but how did the
term come to be associated with homosexuals? Several possibilities exist,
but the acronym for "Good As You" is not one of them.

        The most likely explanation is that it derives from gaycat or geycat, a
slang term for a tramp or hobo who is new to the road. Gaycats were commonly
in the company of older tramps, implying a homosexual relationship. The
term, according to Lighter, dates to at least the 1890s. Gaycats were
employed as lookouts while other hoboes committed crimes. The OED2 cites the
1935 Underworld & Prison Slang by N. Ersine as defining geycat as a
homosexual boy. The origin of gaycat is unknown. Green, however, says a gay
cat was a tramp who offered sexual services to women.

        Another possible origin is the late nineteenth century slang usage of gay
to mean promiscuous. A gay house meant a brothel. This sexual sense of the
term could have become associated with homosexuals and the heterosexual
sense lost."

    Most of the explanations which tie the various meanings of the word
"gay" seem tenuous at best.  All I can say is that nothing queers a word
more than using it as a euphemism for a taboo subject.  Lately, a similar
shift seems to be occuring to the word "partner" (in the Kevin Smith film
"Dogma," Ben Affleck tells Linda Fiorentino that he and Matt Damon are
"partners" and she automatically assumes that the two of them are gay).  The
word shifted in meaning from "a member of any group engaged in some sort of
joint enterprise (be it sports, business, dancing, etc.)" to "an individual
officially registered in a "domestic partnership" with another individual,
often of the same sex" to "significant other in a (usually monogamous)
same-sex relationship."

-Chollie
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