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Gay

name
/ɡeɪ/

Etymology

From Middle English gay, from Old French gai (“joyful, laughing, merry”), usually thought to be a borrowing of Old Occitan gai (“impetuous, lively”), from Gothic *𐌲𐌰𐌷𐌴𐌹𐍃 (*gaheis, “impetuous”), merging with earlier Old French jai ("merry"; see jay), from Frankish *gāhi; both from Proto-Germanic *ganhuz, *ganhwaz (“sudden”). This is possibly derived from Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰengʰ- (“to stride, step”), from *ǵʰeh₁- (“to leave”), but Kroonen rejects this derivation and treats the Germanic word as having no known etymology. cognates and sense derivation Cognate with Dutch gauw (“fast, quickly”), Westphalian Low German gau, gai (“fast, quick”), German jäh (“abrupt, sudden”). Anatoly Liberman, following Frank Chance and Harri Meier, believes Old French gai was instead a native development from Latin vagus (“wandering, inconstant, flighty”), with *[w] > [g] as in French gaine. The sense of homosexual (first recorded no later than 1937 by Cary Grant in the film Bringing Up Baby, and possibly earlier in 1922 in the poem "Miss Furr and Miss Skeene" by Gertrude Stein) was shortened from earlier gay boy ("young male prostitute") - and gay cat ("homosexual boy") in underworld and prison slang, itself first attested about 1935, but used earlier for a young tramp or hobo attached to an older one. Pejorative usage is due to hostility towards homosexuality. The sense of ‘upright’, used in reference to a dog’s tail, probably derives from the ‘happy’ sense of the word.

  1. derived from vagus
  2. derived from *ǵʰengʰ-✻
  3. derived from *ganhuz✻
  4. derived from *gāhi✻
  5. derived from jai
  6. derived from *𐌲𐌰𐌷𐌴𐌹𐍃✻
  7. derived from gai
  8. derived from gai
  9. inherited from gay

Definitions

  1. An English surname transferred from the nickname, originally a nickname for a cheerful or…

    An English surname transferred from the nickname, originally a nickname for a cheerful or lively person.

  2. A unisex given name from English.

  3. Homosexual

    Homosexual:

    • Cliff is gay, but his twin brother is straight.
    • He was not happy at the farm and went to a Western city where he associated with a homosexual crowd, being "gay," and wearing female clothes and makeup.
    • She couldn't even gain access from a family friend whose name was on the list, nor could she use her feminine charms to turn on the staff member, who revealed he was gay and was more impressed seeing Billy and Chuck enter the building.
  4. ›+ 17 more definitions

    1. Flamboyant or effeminate in behavior.

    2. Used to express dislike

      Used to express dislike: lame, uncool, stupid, burdensome, contemptible, generally bad.

      • This game is gay; let’s play a different one.
      • Dolph: "Oh, man! You kissed a girl!" Jimbo: "That is so gay!"

    3. Happy, joyful, and lively.

      • The Gay Science

    4. Quick, fast.

      • I went a gay shack, / For it started to rain.
      • We launched our canoe and were off at a gay clip for Hackettstown, where Mart had a married sister, and we were figuring on big eats.
      • My correspondent, who was riding in the first coach, comments that the small standard tender did not take kindly to this gay progress, and signified its disapproval from time to time by bombarding the train with lumps of coal!

    5. Festive, bright, or colourful.

      • Pennsylvania Dutch include the plain folk and the gay folk.
      • A Beavie of fair women, richly gay / In gems and wanton dress.
      • Don we now our gay apparel.

    6. Fair, beautiful, pretty, bonny

      Fair, beautiful, pretty, bonny; elegant, fine.

      • Thy purse and eke thy gay guilt kniues, thy pincase gallant to the eie: No better wore the Burgesse wiues, and yet thou wouldst not loue me.
      • 'I knowe wher is a gay castle, Is builded of lyme and stone; Within their is a gay ladie, Her lord is riden and gone.'

    7. Sexually promiscuous (of any gender), (sometimes particularly) engaged in prostitution.

      • Prince Borghese was what is called a "gay, dissipated man"—that is to say, a powerful person leading a debauched and infamous life.

    8. Upright or curved over the back.

      • While the dog in concentrating at a given task, the tail is carried low and used for balance. In excitement it may rise level with the back. A “gay” tail is a fault.

    9. Considerable, great, large in number, size, or degree. In this sense, also in the variant…

      Considerable, great, large in number, size, or degree. In this sense, also in the variant gey.

      • As his reply was rather characteristic, I will give it : Many of them come a gay bit off.
      • Thou 's wantin' a sweetheart? Thou 's had a gay few! An' thou 's cheatit them, […]
      • A gay deal different to what I is noo.

    10. A homosexual, especially a male homosexual.

      • [headline] N.Y. Gays: Will the Spark Die?
      • "Same-sex dancing, as we call it, is quite legal," a gay named Lew Todd, who was one of the spokesmen, spoke up.
      • Yet that does not mean that the issues, concerns and attitudes of gays and lesbians in the workplace are not important.

    11. Gayness

      Gayness: the quality of being gay.

      • Anti-gay persecution holds that you can pray the gay out of a person, or scare it out of them, or cajole it out of them.

    12. Something which is bright or colorful, such as a picture or a flower.

      • At a stall soon Mary bote / A hume-book full ov gays.
      • I had no books to read, but plenty of gays to look at.
      • ‘Can't you mow the aftermath in the churchyard before Sunday?’ ‘Not time enough, sir, but I'll cut off they gays.’

    13. An ornament, a knick-knack.

      • Look upon precepts in emblems, as they do to upon gays and pictures.

    14. To make happy or cheerful.

      • SAYING GOOD-BYE (song) WE are always saying / "Good-bye, good-bye! / In work, in playing, / In gloom, in gaying […]
      • Gaying Things Up For Christmas. JESSIE TODD, Laboratory School, University of Chicago. EVERY schoolroom in America is gayed up for Christmas.

    15. To cause (something, e.g. AIDS) to be associated with homosexual people.

    16. Considerably, very.

      • And, tho' his guts ware lank and toom, / They're twice as big's this gay big room.
      • Now, to end my story, if o' t' village beauties wad git t' religion that good auld parson Jenkins recommends, it wad gay sharply mak' t' dirty women clean, […]
      • […] an' be t' Silver Cwove, an' than throo t' Pillar, an' a gay rough bit o' grund it is!

    17. The letter —, which stands for the sound /ɡ/, in Pitman shorthand.

The neighborhood

Derived

sexual sense, anti-gay, be gay, do crime, cisgay, don't say gay, fake and gay, gaily, gay as pink ink, gay-ass, gay baby jail, gaybait, gay bar, gay basher, gay bash, gay-bash, gaybeseen, gaybine, gaybo, gay bob, gay bomb, gayborhood, gaybourhood, gay bowel syndrome, gay boy, gayboy, Gaybraham, gayby, gayby boom, gay cancer, gaycation, gaycel, Gaychester, gay chicken, gaycism, gaycist, gay curious, gaydar, gay-dar, gay death, gay disease · +113 more

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for Gay. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA