That's So Gay: The Prescriptivist's Nightmare

"Not a Homosexual or somehing [sic] that you find stupid, dumb, idiotic, pointless, and or annoying.
It is simply a term to describe a happy mood or expression."

—      Urbandictionary.com user Tyler Turner, March 22, 2008[1]

Mr. Turner’s definition of the word “gay,” posted on Urbandictionary.com reveals a linguistic and cultural sore spot among many English speakers: the semantic drift that inevitably has given a word a meaning he does not like. Gay has, since at least the 1970s, almost exclusively meant “homosexual,” replacing the supposed original definition of “happy.” However, Mr. Turner is incorrect in saying “gay” only has one definition. The OED lists 72 senses (32 main senses, 40 subentry senses) of the word, beginning with “bright or lively-looking, esp. in colour; brilliant, showy” in the late Middle Ages. The word has a far more complicated legacy than the amateur lexicographer quoted above realizes.

The etymology of “gay” is difficult to trace. The OED is itself unsure of its origins, pointing to both Old High German and Occitan as possible originators. The word entered Middle English through French. Where the French got it from is debated. Both the OED and the DEAF, the Dictionnaire Étymologique de l'Ancien Français[2] suggest the French gai and its variants was descended from Old High German gāhi[3] (sometimes spelt gæhe) meaning quick and impetuous.[4] According to the OED's 2^nd edition in 1989, this theory "is now generally abandoned."[5] The 3^rd  edition seems less sure about it being abandoned, instead discussing at some length its possible Germanic origins. In my opinion, a more likely origin for the French word is from Old Occitan, also spelled gai or jai, meaning “joyful” as an adjective and “joy” as a noun.[6] This is analogous to the medieval French spellings gai, gae, gaye, gay, guai; wai, and way; which survives in modern French’s “gai,” which means happy, joyful, always in good humor,[7] identical to its meaning in the Middle Ages.[8] The Occitan word would be applied to the region’s troubadour poetry as “gai saber”: “gay knowledge,”[9] which Thomas Rymer would introduce to English as a name for poetry in 1693 as “the gay science.”[10]

“Gay” has several meanings in Anglo-Norman, the dialect of Old French spoken in England after the Norman Conquest. It could mean “frolicsome,” “happy,” and “lighthearted,” but it could also mean “fickle,” “impetuous,” “rash,” and “lascivious, lewd.”[11] These meanings were carried over to Middle English. The earliest use of “gay” attested to in the OED is in a Middle English manuscript dated to around 1200-1225, Cotton MS Cleopatra C.vi, part of the Ancrene Riwle, a book of instructions for anchoresses. A marginal note reads, in a very archaic dialect, "Hwi þe Gay world is to fleon," though the exact sense of gay is unclear. It is not clear when the first sense of gay—"Bright or lively-looking, esp. in colour; brilliant, showy” is attested to, as medieval books were rarely the first version of their contents. The earliest possible date for an attestation in the popular poem Kyng Alisaunderis 1300, though the manuscript is probably from around 1425. Other earlier uses are in a 1338 chronicle by Robert Mannyng; and The Romance of William of Palerne in 1350.[12]

The earliest uses of “gay” in English were relatively neutral and indeed, often positive. It soon came to mean “finely or showily dressed,” as used by Chaucer in his Parlement of Foules; “noble and excellent” as early as 1350 and often used poetically as an epithet for a noble woman, notably in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. The familiar definition of "cheerful, lighthearted, merry" also dates to the 1380s, with the Pearl Poet in Cleanness and Chaucer in Troilus & Crisyde. Somehow a regional expression developed along the lines of "to have a gay mind," meaning "to be inclined to," like the modern "I have a good mind to...", first attested to by William of Palerne around 1350. This would be used as late as 1932 but is now considered obsolete. The noble definition became ironic, especially when employed by the Scots, beginning in the 1580s. “Gay” in modern English is both an adjective and a noun. This study will focus on its adjectival use.

Like its Anglo-Norman predecessor, the Middle English “gay” had negative connotations. Chaucer uses it in “The Miller’s Tale,” when the smith asks Absalom “What eyleth yow? Som gay gerl, God it woot, / Hath broght yow thus upon the viritoot.” (Mil.l.3769-3770).[13] Here, “gay” means lewd and wanton, like one of the earlier Anglo-Norman definitions. The late sixteenth century introduced “dedicated to social pleasures; dissolute, promiscuous; frivolous, hedonistic” to the definitions, and this would be popular through the nineteenth century, appearing in terms such as “gay blade,” “gay deceiver,” and “gay lothario.” At this point, the word indicated someone who may not have been always moral but also wasn’t depraved.[14] By the 1790s, a “gay lady” could be a prostitute and a “gay house” a brothel, extending the definitions of dissolution and promiscuity. It is probably the combined senses of frivolity, hedonism, and ultimately immorality that led to “gay” being applied to homosexual men.

“Gay” as slang for “homosexual” is usually dated to the early twentieth century, with the OED suggesting a 1922 short story by Gertrude Stein, “Miss Furr & Miss Skeene,” as the first written attestation. Geoffrey Hughes in An Encyclopedia of Swearing reports that the 1972 OED Supplement traces it back even further to 1889 in England, with the Cleveland Street Scandal, in which a homosexual brothel frequented by some of London’s elite was uncovered, though the use of “gay” appears to be the then-current sense of promiscuous rather than anything specific to homosexuality. More certain uses date to the 1930s.[15] “Gay” became the accepted, non-medical and non-derogatory term for homosexual men and women (along with their own term “lesbian”) by the 1970s, and it remains in common use today. A new sense of “lame, stupid” appeared in the 1980s and was popular among children in the mid-2000s, possibly arising from the negative associations of attraction to the same gender, including weakness. This usage has been rejected by members of the LGBT community. The “homosexual” sense of the word is now considered the most prevalent use, and is listed first in most dictionaries organized logically, including The American Heritage Dictionary’s current 5^th edition, The New Oxford American Dictionary, and Dictionary.com. 

Zits, July 25, 2006. Jeremy encounters the ambiguity of "gay." [16]

“Gay” has become a controversial word, with many people objecting to its use by “the gays.” “[The] special-interest use of gay,” fumes John Simon, “undermines the correct use of a legitimate and needed English word. It now becomes ambiguous to call a cheerful person or thing gay; to wish someone a gay journey or holiday, for example, may have totally uncalled-for over- and undertones and, in conservative circles, may even be considered insulting. The insulting aspect we can eventually get rid of; the ambiguous, never. What do we do about it? If we energetically reject gay as a legitimate synonym for homosexual, it may not be too late to bury this linguistic abomination.”[17] This ambiguity is apparently too much for some people. Historian Paul Johnson agrees, saying “There is no historical case for homosexual ownership of ‘gay.’ So can we have our word back, please.”[18]

Johnson is appealing to an etymological fallacy—“gay” doesn’t mean homosexual, that use dates back to only the early twentieth century and the word has been stolen from normal usage! This controversy is, says Fowler’s Dictionary of English Modern Usage, “a cloak for much darker sociological concerns.”[19] Wayne R. Dynes calls this in his Encyclopedia of Homosexuality "a particularly ludicrous complaint… advanced by some heterosexual writers, that the 'innocent' word gay has been 'kidnapped' by homosexuals in their insouciant willingness to subvert the canons of language as well as morals." This complaint ignores that "gay" was applied by an ostensibly heterosexual society to people deemed immoral long before it was supposedly stolen.[20]

The changing definition of “gay” is controversial both for its connection to a controversial topic and the challenge it poses to prescriptivism. The most prevalent definition in the twenty-first century is not what it was in medieval France and England. To prescriptivists, homophobic or not, this is a terrifying thing—someone took a perfectly good, innocent word and changed its meaning, so much that one can no longer employ its “correct use” without people thinking of the evil linguistic thief that is the modern homosexual. Feelings on sexual orientation aside, this represents the apparently arbitrary change of language that prescriptivists abhor—a word changing meaning entirely in a very short time, on the whim of non-experts, and the subsequent ruining of a word. If it happened with “gay” it can happen with anything.

Life in Hell, 1986.[21] The idea that words can be "ruined" is representative of prescriptivist complaints.

There are two problems with this. First, there is no single authority of the English language who tells all English speakers how they can and cannot use words. No one is telling you that you cannot use “gay” to mean happy or bright. Second, “gay” has never had only one meaning. Even the Anglo-Norman predecessor and the Middle English forms had multiple definitions. Geoffrey Chaucer, inarguably the standard of Middle English, used it to mean "showily dressed" in Parlement of Foules, "joyful" in Troilus & Crisyde and "wanton" in The Canterbury Tales. Nor has it always been “innocent.” “Gay” had pejorative senses in both Anglo-Norman and Middle English, and in the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries denoted prostitutes, rakes, and an overall sense of being frivolous and too given to pleasure, hardly innocent subjects.

The semantic drift of “gay” and the subsequent debates over its use reveals the shortcomings of prescriptivism and its underlying social fears. The existence of a polysemous word with an ambiguous origin is bad enough—that its definition has changed almost entirely within living memory is linguistic anarchy. The language of “stealing” and “ruining” is especially indicative of the social dimension of this anxiety. In a way, Paul Johnson is correct, there is no proof of homosexual “ownership” of the word. However, there is no proof of heterosexual ownership. Language develops according to the needs of its users, and “gay” simply managed to fill multiple roles.

Special thanks to my research assistant N.

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[1] Tyler Turner, “Urban Dictionary: Gay,” Urban Dictionary, accessed February 25, 2020, https://www.urbandictionary.com/author.php?author=Tyler%20Turner.
[2] “DEAF Électronique,” accessed March 5, 2020, https://deaf-server.adw.uni-heidelberg.de/?type=image&letter=g&column=35.
[3] "Gay, adj., adv., and n.". OED Online. March 2020. Oxford University Press. https://www-oed-com.ezproxy.library.pfw.edu/view/Entry/77207?isAdvanced=false&result=1&rskey=BAxG22& (accessed March 04, 2020).
[4] “Gâhe Bis Vergâhe (Bd. I, Sp. 454a Bis 455b),” Wörterbuchnetz - Mittelhochdeutsches Wörterbuch von Benecke, Müller, Zarncke, accessed March 5, 2020, http://www.woerterbuchnetz.de/cgi-bin/WBNetz/wbgui_py?sigle=BMZ&lemid=BG00015&mode=Vernetzung&hitlist=&patternlist=&mainmode=.
[5] “Gay, a., Adv., and n.,” Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, https://www.oed.com/oed2/00093147;jsessionid=42AAD765EE4AFB8EAEADAFE1CC85B909.
[6] “Gay, adj., adv., and n.". OED Online.
[7] Éditions Larousse, “Définitions : gai - Dictionnaire de français Larousse,” accessed March 5, 2020, https://www.larousse.fr/dictionnaires/francais/gai/35802.
[8] ATILF - CNRS & Université de Lorraine, “GAI, Adj.,” Dictionnaire du Moyen Français (1330-1500), accessed March 5, 2020, http://atilf.atilf.fr/scripts/dmfAAA.exe?LEM=gai;XMODE=STELLa;FERMER;;AFFICHAGE=0;MENU=menu_dmf;;ISIS=isis_dmf2015.txt;MENU=menu_recherche_dictionnaire;OUVRIR_MENU=1;ONGLET=dmf2015;OO1=2;OO2=1;OO3=-1;s=s126320ac;LANGUE=FR;.
[9] Wayne R. Dynes, “Gay,” in Encyclopedia of Homosexuality, vol. 1 (New York & London: Garland Publishing, Inc, 1990), 455.
[10] “Gay, adj., adv., and n.". OED Online.
[11] The Anglo-Norman Dictionary, “Gai,” The Anglo-Norman Dictionary, accessed March 5, 2020, http://www.anglo-norman.net/D/gai1.
[12] OED Online.
[13] “1.3 The Miller’s Prologue and Tale,” Harvard’s Geoffrey Chaucer Website, accessed March 5, 2020, https://chaucer.fas.harvard.edu/pages/millers-prologue-and-tale.
[14] Dynes, 455.
[15] Geoffrey Hughes, “Homosexuals,” in An Encyclopedia of Swearing: The Social History of Oaths, Profanity, Foul Language, and Ethnic Slurs in the English-Speaking World (Armonk, New York: M. E. Sharpe, 2006), 327.
[16] Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman, Zits, comic strip, July 25, 2006.
[17] John Simon, Paradigms Lost 27 (1980): cited in Geoffrey Hughes, “Homosexuals,” in An Encyclopedia of Swearing: The Social History of Oaths, Profanity, Foul Language, and Ethnic Slurs in the English-Speaking World (Armonk, New York: M. E. Sharpe, 2006), 314.
[18] Paul Johnson (1995): cited in “Gay,” in Fowler’s Dictionary of English Modern Usage (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 338.
[19] Ibid.
[20] Dynes, Homosexuality, 456.
[21] Matt Groening, Life In Hell, comic strip, 1986.