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Today, gay is a socially acceptable term for homosexual people. In 1951, gay appeared in the Oxford English Dictionary for the first time as slang for homosexual, but was most likely used in this way “underground” at least 30 years earlier.įor example, in the 1938 film, Bringing Up Baby, Cary Grant dons a feathery robe when his clothes are sent to the cleaners and says, “.I just went gay.” This line (ad-libbed by Grant) can be interpreted to mean that he was behaving in a happy-go-lucky or lighthearted way but is accepted by many as the first use of gay to mean homosexual in a mainstream movie. This latter use suggests that the younger man was in a sexually submissive role and may be among the first times that gay was used implying a homosexual relationship. In the 1890s, the term “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. “Gay house” was commonly used to refer to a brothel and, later, “gaiety” was used as a common name for certain places of entertainment. A prostitute might have been described as a “gay woman” and a womanizer as a “gay man.” The word gay dates back to the 12th century and comes from the Old French “gai,” meaning “full of joy or mirth.” It may also relate to the Old High German “gahi,” meaning impulsive.įor centuries, gay was used commonly in speech and literature to mean happy, carefree, bright and showy, and did not take on any sexual meaning until the 1600s.Īt that time the meaning of gay as carefree evolved to imply that a person was unrestrained by morals and prone to decadence and promiscuity. Do you know what the word gay really means?