Actually, the first recorded sense, early in the 14th century,
was ‘noble, beautiful,’ or ‘excellent,’
and often the term was employed poetically to praise exceptional
women. The word surfaces in the late 14th century to refer
to something bright or colourful, and before long this sense
was extended to people who were considered carefree, lighthearted
or cheerful.
But those who are cheerful might be engaging in some form
of pleasure and by the 15th century it could also refer to
one virtually addicted to social pleasures just a ‘gay
dog’ was term reserved for a man given to revelling
or self-indulgence. In 1630, William Davenant in The Cruel
Brother and Nicholas Rowe later in 1703 in Fair Penitent
unveiled libertine characters they dubbed ‘Lothario.’
As a result, in the 18th century the term ‘gay Lothario’
was used to refer to such a character. The same sense of a
lack of moral rectitude is seen in the expression ‘gay
abandon’ that refers to actions taken that are not considered
with the consequences that might ensue. In the 19th century,
the word was sometimes applied to a woman deemed to lead an
immoral life, such as a prostitute. Also, the term ‘gaycat’
may have influenced the semantic change of the word gay. By
the turn of the 20th century, this word gaycat was used by
hobos to refer to a tramp’s companion, usually a young
boy, and often his catamite.
The word is first used with the homosexual connotation in
the 1920s by American expatriates living in Paris. The first
OED citation with this sense comes from Gertrude
Stein's Miss Furr & Miss Skeens found in Geography
& Plays (1922): “Helen Furr and Georgina Keene
lived together then. They were together then and traveled
to another place and stayed there and were gay there . . .
not very gay there, just gay there. They were both gay there.”
There is evidence that the word was used before this date.
Hugh Rawson reports in Wicked Words that in 1889
during “the Cleveland Street Scandal (involving post
office boys in a male brothel in London's West End), a prostitute
named John Saul used gay with reference to both male homosexuals
and to female prostitutes when giving evidence to the police
and in court.” Gay's first dictionary appearance in
its homosexual sense is in Noel Erskine's Underworld&
Prison Slang (1935) : “Gaycat . . . a homosexual
boy.”
Although the word still possesses the sense of ‘merry,’
the homosexual connotation is the dominant one notwithstanding
the acceptability of ‘donning gay apparel’ during
Yuletide festivities.
Incidentally, ‘gay’ is still evolving and is
used by many teenagers to designate what they regard as socially
inappropriate, what is often labelled as ‘lame.’
In 2001, the Washington Post reported, “Today,
they [teenagers] often use gay as an adjective meaning ‘stupid.’
A gay movie is a stupid movie or one that makes no sense or
one with a lame plot or all of those things. But soon after
gay people started to protest this usage and I’m happy
to say it is not used as much nowadays.
The journey of ‘faggot’ from sticks to a very
derogatory one for a homosexual is a rather peculiar odyssey.
The word is found in its original sense in English in the
14th century but by the 16th century it is used to refer to
kindling wood used for burning heretics and the expression
‘to fry a faggot’ meant to be burned alive and
‘to carry a faggot’ referred to those who renounced
heresy. The bundle sense was not lost altogether and the term
by the 16th century could refer to miscellaneous bundles,
and in particular, a bundle of iron or steel.
By the late 16th century a sea-change in the meaning of the
word occurred and it becomes a term of abuse or contempt for
a woman. This probably occurred because a broom could be fashioned
from a bundle of sticks and in the process of metonymy whereby
a word associated with another word substitutes, for e.g.,
‘wheels’ to replace ‘car,’ faggot
became a stand-in for woman. As a broom is not a highly-prized
object and is associated with domestic chores often saddled
on women, the term faggot became a pejorative term for a woman.
This usage may also have been influenced by witches being
associated with brooms and the burning of witches in the Middle
Ages. Interestingly, the word ‘besom’ was used
since the eleventh century to refer to a pile of twigs or
a broom but the 19th century, it too became a contemptuous,
if somewhat jocular, term for a woman Even in the early part
of the 20th century we see ‘faggot’ used in this
manner. For example, in James Joyce's 1922 Ulysses,
the character Molly Bloom refers to “That old faggot
Mrs Riordan,” and three years later in D.H. Lawrence's
Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine a character
is described as “fractious, tiresome and a faggot.”
We even see this usage as late as 1961 in Scott O'Dell's Island
of the Blue Dolphin: the young heroine admits to singeing
her hair “with a faggot.”
The process of the transformation of the major sense of faggot
from woman to homosexual occurs in the early part of the 20th
century. The first citation in the OED in 1914 makes
it clear that the word is hardly mainstream as we see this
entry from L.E. Jackson and C.R. Hellyer's A Vocabulary
of Criminal Slang: “Drag, Example, All the fagots
(sissies) will be dressed in drag at the ball tonight.”
The homosexual sense of the word was much more common by the
1930s and in J. Dos Passos' The Big Money, we read,
“The first thing Marge thought was how on earth she
could ever have liked that faggot.” Faggot, is hardly
alone in having its primary meaning shift from a description
of a woman to a homosexual. Any derogatory word for a woman,
or associated with the distinctive parts of a female, can
be applied to homosexuals, or for that manner for any male
perceived as effeminate or not ‘man enough.’ Examples
abound, such as ‘pussy,’ ‘douchbag,’
‘pantywaist,’ ‘nancy boy’ and other
terms too lurid for print in a family newspaper.
Increasingly today, we see the word faggot being used with
no imputation of sexuality as a generalized insult to describe
a male regarded as a ‘jerk.’ Although some commentators
suggest that an increased use of the word ‘faggot’
will render the word innocuous, (e.g.,’gay’ was
once used primarily in an insulting manner, but nowadays is
used merely as a descriptive synonym for a homosexual) it
seems unlikely. The word ‘faggot’ still has a
powerful sting to it and as we still see many gay adolescents
have committed suicide being so labelled. In other words,
we are not at a point in time when it is likely that this
word's sense can be rehabilitated.
