Gay
Meanings
- An English surname transferred from the nickname, originally a nickname for a cheerful or lively person.
- A unisex given name from English.
- A female given name from English, from the word gay (“joyful”); rare today.
- A male given name from English.
- A male given name transferred from the surname.
- A diminutive of the male given names Gaylord or Gabriel, and similar names
- Homosexual:
- Possessing sexual and/or romantic attraction towards people one perceives to be the same sex or gender as oneself.
- Describing a homosexual man.
- Tending to partner or mate with other individuals of the same sex.
- Between two or more persons perceived to be of the same sex or gender as each other.
- Not heterosexual, or not cisgender: homosexual, bisexual, asexual, transgender, etc.
- Intended for gay people, especially gay men.
- Homosexually in love with someone.
- Infatuated with something, aligning with homosexual stereotypes.
- In accordance with stereotypes of homosexual people:
- Being in accordance with stereotypes of gay people, especially gay men.
- Exhibiting appearance or behavior that accords with stereotypes of gay people, especially gay men.
- A homosexual, especially a male homosexual.
- Gayness: the quality of being gay.
- Something which is bright or colorful, such as a picture or a flower.
- An ornament, a knick-knack.
- To make happy or cheerful.
- To cause (something, e.g. AIDS) to be associated with homosexual people.
- Considerably, very.
- The letter —, which stands for the sound /ɡ/, in Pitman shorthand.
Pronunciation
Word forms
Etymology
From Middle English gay, from Old French gai (“joyful, laughing, merry”), usually thought to be a borrowing of Old Occitan gai (“impetuous, lively”), from Gothic *𐌲𐌰𐌷𐌴𐌹𐍃 (*gaheis, “impetuous”), merging with earlier Old French jai ("merry"; see jay), from Frankish *gāhi; both from Proto-Germanic *ganhuz, *ganhwaz (“sudden”). This is possibly derived from Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰengʰ- (“to stride, step”), from *ǵʰeh₁- (“to leave”), but Kroonen rejects this derivation and treats the Germanic word as having no known etymology. cognates and sense derivation Cognate with Dutch gauw (“fast, quickly”), Westphalian Low German gau, gai (“fast, quick”), German jäh (“abrupt, sudden”). Anatoly Liberman, following Frank Chance and Harri Meier, believes Old French gai was instead a native development from Latin vagus (“wandering, inconstant, flighty”), with *[w] > [g] as in French gaine. The sense of homosexual (first recorded no later than 1937 by Cary Grant in the film Bringing Up Baby, and possibly earlier in 1922 in the poem "Miss Furr and Miss Skeene" by Gertrude Stein) was shortened from earlier gay boy ("young male prostitute") - and gay cat ("homosexual boy") in underworld and prison slang, itself first attested about 1935, but used earlier for a young tramp or hobo attached to an older one. Pejorative usage is due to hostility towards homosexuality. The sense of ‘upright’, used in reference to a dog’s tail, probably derives from the ‘happy’ sense of the word.