Word Dissection 101

[drewbear]

I was thinking about the multiple meanings of so many words in the English language (don't ask, I'm not sure where that train of thought came from anyway) and foudn myself contemplating the words that our society uses to label homosexuals.

First off, the word "homosexual" itself. While the translation is akin to "sexual attraction to the same gender" from the Greek root homo, the word homo also appears in Latin, where it means "man" or "mankind", thereby subtly changing the meaning to "sexual attraction to men or mankind". Sorry straight ladies! You're one of us! (Maybe this is also why we associate the word "homosexual" almost exclusively with male homosexuals and not female homosexuals.)

Secondly, "gay". It originally meant happy or light-hearted and came to be used as an epithet decrying the perceived unmanliness of gay men, who were all obviously very, very fey, right? Which leads us to the associate word, "fairy", which became an epithet for much the same reasons.

Fourthly ("fairy" was the third. Keep up, people!), "queer". "Queer" originally meant (and still does to an extent) odd or strange, possibly in a disturbing manner. The application to homosexuality should be obvious.

Finally (for now), "fag" and "faggot". A "faggot" was originally a small bundle of sticks suitable as kindling for a fire and in British English, is slang for a cigarette. I honestly have no idea how "faggot" came to be an insult referring to homosexuals, but I suspect it might have something to do with burning us?

Now, of all these, I use "gay" when referring to myself. It's mostly because that's the term I first heard used to describe it, but I continue to use it because I prefer to think of myself as happy rather than disquietingly strange or potentially flammable.

Thoughts?

Comments

[lysariala.livejournal.com]

i dunno drew, you do sorta "spark out" sometimes... never quite flaming, toasty maybe?

i just dont like the word fag or faggot, they sound really ugly to me :P

[drewbeartx.livejournal.com]

Yeah, fag/faggot is all around a pretty nasty word with nasty connotations. I know that some people are trying to "reclaim it" in the name of queerdom (whatever), but I don't want it in the first place.

[dedos.livejournal.com]

I think gay originally was created by.. uh, gays, as an acronym for "Good As You". Now, it rhymed with fey, etc. etc, but I think it was created by queers. ;)

And yeah, faggot means, we're good enough to burn. :P It's horrible.

[drewbeartx.livejournal.com]

an acronym for "Good As You"

Huh. I did not know that. I just know that the word originally meant happy and assumed that it had been applied as an epithet rather than being self-applied as an acronym.

And yeah, faggot means, we're good enough to burn.

Random thought bubble: I wonder if this is where we get the term "flaming" to describe glamboyantly over-the-top gayness.

[drewbeartx.livejournal.com]

Er, FLAMBOYANTLY. I cannot type, tonight!

[dedos.livejournal.com]

Hrm, you got me thinking about this, so I did a little research. Apparently, wikipedia and some other sites think the acronym is a bit of revisionism rather than based in history. Oh well.

As an apology for spreading falsehood, here's a good site with origins of just the words you were looking at!
http://www.religioustolerance.org/hom_term.htm

[dibsy.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure about the derivation of English offensive epithets, poof, bender, etc, but it occurs to me that you may be interested in is Polari, or Palare. It was a slang language used by sailors, romany, other travellers, but evolved into purely being a gay coded language. You can read all about it and get a glossary here (http://members.aol.com/frij/). If you know all about it anyway, or fancy a laugh, here is the King James Bible translated into Polari (http://www.thesisters.demon.co.uk/bible/).

Apologies if this is old news. I don't mean to be naff.

[drewbeartx.livejournal.com]

No, I didn't know about this. Thanks for the link!