June 19th, 2009 -- by Bacchus
Gay Book, 1936
One is surprised this didn’t catch on the way Redbook did:
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Shorter URL for sharing: http://www.erosblog.com/?p=3517
Shorter URL for sharing: http://www.erosblog.com/?p=3517
The word “gay” has only meant “homosexual” since about 1985. In 1936 (the cover date of this image) the word “gay” meant “happy, care-free”.
I assume the word “gay” is used in the old “happy”-meaning – it doesn’t seem a bit gay in the modern sense to me ;)
I agree with both of you that the word was used here in its old meaning. But I don’t agree with Techreader’s dating. Noel Coward was using the word in its “homosexual” sense as early as 1929. And I personally remember in the early 1970s, which I was a little kid, having older kids try to get me to say “gay” in front of adults to get me in trouble; they told me it just meant “happy” but they were sniggering so hard I knew it was a trap.
I think you must surely be correct that by 1929ish, the word “gay” was used to denote homosexuality. It was likely however, that there was only a very small community that used the term in that way, because I don’t think that “polite” society was familiar with it’s connotation.
After all, people at that time only whispered the word “pregnant”…
I surmise that only relatively sophisticated groups of writers, actors, musicians, artists, etc., bantered the word about amongst their friends and associates. It explains an awful LOT of clever entenders, from back in the day, that are just TOO good to be mere coincidence.
I would liken it to when John Lennon held a bottle of Coke (the soft drink…) under his nose, and pretended to snort it, in one of the train compartment scenes in the movie “A Hard Day’s Night”. If the censors, in that time period, had known what was going on, they probably would have cut the scene, as popular and influential as the Beatles were… As it was, only those “in-the-know” got the joke.
The Oxford English Dictionary has the first written use for homosexual as 1922.
In the Gay Book I would suggest that it is from another definition:
Originally of persons and later also more widely: dedicated to social pleasures; dissolute, promiscuous; frivolous, hedonistic. Also (esp. in to go gay): uninhibited; wild, crazy; flamboyant. Cf. Gay Nineties n. at Special uses 2a. Now rare.