why should gay be a homo word when it really means happy dont you think its gay?

Answer 1

it's all gay! People just don't like admitting that lol.

Answer 2

It's quite funny when you see some real old films where the characters are talking about "what a gay day" they've had, or "we had a gay old time".

Also there's a football (soccer) stadium in the uk called "Gay Meadow", I believe they are moving grounds at the end of the season due to the pitch getting flooded.

The meanings of words change over time as my examples above show.

Another word that I believe is used in reference to gays in America is "Fairy". But here in the UK, "Fairy" as a gay reference is rare, and probably the most popular brand of washing up (doing the dishs) liquid is "Fairy Liquid"

Answer 3

homos got called GAY because they often are More so than straights. just go to a gay bar and see for yourself. them folks is GAY!

Answer 4

For the same reason we call thongs flip flops now, for the same reason people don't like rainbows as much, because some deviants went and messed things up for the rest of the world.

Answer 5

I think it's beyond repair now. Even if we got the word back.. I wouldn't want to refer to myself as gay under any circumstance. "Happy" will do just fine.

Answer 6

you are right and a rainbow is Gods thing not for homo's

Answer 7

because they get happiness from out of unrestrained relationship, they are called gay.

Answer 8

I think this question is gay.

Answer 9

Gay
This adjective, meaning joyful or light-hearted, is of uncertain origin. The English word comes from the French gai, but where this French word comes from is uncertain. There are cognates in other Romance languages, notably Provencal, Old Spanish, Portugeuse, and Italian, but no likely Latin candidate for a root exists. The word may ultimately be Germanic in origin, with the Old High German wâhi, meaning pretty, and gâhi, swift, being suggested as possible progenitors, but the transition from the medial h in those roots to the Romantic forms is problematic.

The word is first recorded in English sometime before 1310 in a poem found in T. Wright's Specimens of Lyric Poetry:

Heo is . . . Graciouse, stout, ant Gay, Gentil, jolyf so the jay.
Another early use is in Chaucer's The Miller's Tale, c.1386:

This Absolon, that iolif was and gay, Gooth with a sencer on the haliday.
In recent years, however, the traditional sense of gay has been driven out of the language by the newer sense meaning homosexual. Many believe this new sense of gay to be quite recent, when in fact it dates at least to the 1920s and perhaps even earlier. This early existence is as a slang and self-identifying code word among homosexuals, only entering the mainstream of English in the late 1960s. So how did this word meaning joyful come to refer to homosexuality?

There are two, not necessarily mutually exclusive, commonly proferred explanations that are plausible.

Perhaps the most commonly touted one is that the modern use of gay comes from a clipping of gaycat, a slang term among hobos and itinerants meaning a boy or young man who accompanies an older, more experienced tramp, with the implication of sexual favors being exchanged for protection and instruction. The term was often used disparagingly and dates to at least 1893, when it appears in the November issue of Century magazine:

The gay-cats are men who will work for "very good money," and are usually in the West in the autumn to take advantage of the high wages offered to laborers during the harvest season.
The disparaging sense can be seen in this citation from the 10 August 1895 issue of Harper's Weekly:

The hobo is an exceedingly proud fellow, and if you want to offend him, call him a "gay cat" or a "poke-outer."
And from Jack London's The Road, published in 1907, but this passage is a reference to 1892:

In a more familiar parlance, gay-cats are short-horns, chechaquos, new chums, or tenderfeet. A gay-cat is a newcomer on The Road who is man-grown, or, at least, youth-grown.
The second possible explanation is that the homosexual sense is an outgrowth of an earlier sense of gay meaning addicted to pleasure, self-indulgent, or immoral. This sense dates to at least 1637, when it appears in James Shirley's play The Lady of Pleasure:

Lord. You'le not be angry, Madam.
Cel. Nor rude, though gay men have a priviledge.
By the early 19th century, this sense had developed into a euphemism for prostitution. From John Davis's 1805 The Post-Captain:

As our heroes passed along the Strand, they were accosted by a hundred gay ladies, who asked them if they were good-natured. "Devil take me! . . . there is not a girl in the Strand that I would touch with my gloves on."
This could easily have transferred to male prostitutes and then generalized to mean homosexual writ large.

One potential early usage of the modern sense of gay, meaning homosexual, is from an 1868 song by female impersonator Will S. Hays titled, Gay Young Clerk in the Dry Goods Store. The lyrics do not explicitly link the word with homosexuality, but they can be interpreted that way, especially if sung by a man in drag. Then again, that may be reading too much into the lyrics. You be the judge:

It's about a chap, perhaps you know,
I'm told he is 'Nobody's beau,'
But maybe you all knew that before,
He's a lively clerk in a Dry-Goods Store.
O! Augustus Dolphus is his name,
From Skiddy-ma-dink they say he came,
He's a handsome man and he's proud and poor,
This gay young clerk in the Dry-Goods Store.
Another early appearance that is of questionable meaning is from Gertrude Stein's 1922 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 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 1929, in Noel Coward's musical Bittersweet. In the song Green Carnation, four overdressed, dandies sing:

Pretty boys, witty boys, You may sneer
At our disintegration.
Haughty boys, naughty boys,
Dear, dear, dear!
Swooning with affectation...
And as we are the reason
For the "Nineties" being gay,
We all wear a green carnation.
The penultimate line refers to the 1890s, which were commonly called the gay nineties. In general usage, this appellation had nothing to do with homosexuality, but in this context, Coward clearly uses it as a double entendre.

It appears again in Charles Ford and Parker Tyler's 1933 The Young and Evil:

Gayest thing on two feet.
An in the 1938 movie Bringing Up Baby, the character played by Cary Grant, when asked why he is wearing women's clothing replies:

Because I just went gay all of a sudden.
This is obviously a joke intended to slip past the censors.

The term remained slang within the homosexual community until the late 1960s, when the Stonewall riots and the rise of homosexual rights activism brought this sense of gay to wider society.

It's probably worth mentioning that there is a false acronymic origin for gay floating about, that it stands for Good As You. Like most acronymic origins for words, this is just incorrect.

(Sources: Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd Edition; Historical Dictionary of American Slang; Merriam-Webster New Book of Word Histories)

posted by MAHMOUD AL ANAKRIH
AMMAN JORDAN

Answer 10

i think its because rainbow is their like "symbol" and a rainbow is a very happy thing :p