Who ever came up with the stupid word Gay. I hate being called Gay, I'm anything but Gay.?

Question

I think it is a very derogatory term and should be done away with

Answer 1

In modern usage, the adjective gay usually refers to homosexual people. In earlier usage, the word meant "carefree", "happy", or "bright and showy", though this usage is infrequent today. Gay sometimes also refers to the culture of homosexual individuals, as in "gay history", or to things perceived by others to be typical of gay people, as in "gay music". The word gay is sometimes used refer to same-sex relationships more generally, as in "gay marriage", although this usage is discouraged by some LGBT supporters: the rationale is that this usage is exclusive of bisexual and transgendered people. While gay applies to all homosexual people, the term lesbian is gender-specific: it is used exclusively to describe homosexual women. There is no corresponding word for men.
The primary meaning of the word gay has changed dramatically during the 20th century—though the change evolved from earlier usages. It derives via the Old French gai, probably from a Germanic source.[1] The word originally meant "carefree", "happy", or "bright and showy" and was very commonly used with this meaning in speech and literature. For example, the title of the 1938 ballet aptly named Gaîté Parisienne ("Parisian Gaiety"), a patchwork compiled from Jacques Offenbach's operettas, illustrates this connotation.

The British comic strip Jane was first published in the 1930s and described the adventures of Jane Gay. This did not describe her sexuality (she had plenty of boyfriends), but was a play on Lady Jane Grey.

Look up gay in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.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 extramarital 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 United States, according to the 1990 US census[2]). 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 radio show The Gay Byrne Show. It can also be used as a short form of the female name Gaynell and as a short form of the male names Gaylen and Gaylord. The "Gaiety" was also a common name for places of entertainment. One of Oscar Wilde's favourite venues in Dublin was the Gaiety Theatre, first appearing there in 1884.
The use of the term gay, as it relates to homosexuality, arises from 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",[3] or in the title of the book and film The Gay Falcon (1941), which concerns a womanizing 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 & Miss 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:

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

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 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 remain 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!"[4] 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". There is much debate about what Grant meant with the ad-lib (the line was not in the script). The word continued to be used with the dominant meaning of "carefree", as evidenced by the title of 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 behaviour), 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". Homosexuality was no longer classified as an illness in the DSM by 1973, but the clinical connotation of the word was already embedded in society.

One of the many characters invented by 1950s TV comic Ernie Kovacs was a "gay-acting" poet named Percy Dovetonsils. In one of his poems (which were always read to an imaginary off-screen character named "Bruce") he mentions the expression "gay caballero".

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 at Berchtesgaden — which formed part of the plot of the film The Producers. The camp implications of the concept were explicit in the pastiche of Coward's style epitomised by the title song:

Answer 2

First of all, I have to say, the answer given by Bigalmac....what a load of nonsense and ambiguous twaddle!!!!
Andrew w is the one who got his history spot on. But you don't want a history lesson do you?
I must agree with you, the word gay has lost its value in contemporary society. Especially when heterosexuals use it as a derogatory term to describe anything which is stupid. Yes, I think is should be done away with, but we could never implement it could we?
Learn to live with it, and do not justify it with any of your attention!

Answer 3

why is it dertogatory? it only seems that way because people use it in a negative way. i think the word gay actuly means happy. although i do agree that it was a stupid word to choose to mean homosexual, why should a word which describes an emotional state be used to describe a persons sexuality? surely the two things have nothing to do with each other.

Answer 4

Unfortualty it is another word that has lost its origional meaning through improper use.
Up untill about 50 years ago, to be 'gay' meant to be happy.
Other words that this has happened to include the reference of a female dog (B****h), Someone whos parents, didnt marry before they were born (B****rd) and someone who when having sex, uses the girls back-passage would be called a bu*ger

Answer 5

I heard that homosexuals derived the word gay from the saying (we are as) "Good As You".
I preferred the original meaning of the word.

Answer 6

I don't think the word "Gay" is derogatory at all.

Answer 7

Before this word became mainstream description for homosexuals it simply meant to be happy or cheerful, although it still does mean these things the hyjacking took place in the 60`s.

Answer 8

Gay means happy not in love like the people today use it,
so people say u r happy and u saying ur anything not so ur saying ur sad

Answer 9

Gay used to mean bright and happy I think that you lot should still be called poofs

Answer 10

1

Answer 11

I'm wondering how it became a reference to homosexuality.

It means being happy or a happy environment.