11 December 2023
Gay traditionally meant joyful or light-hearted but in the last century came to mean homosexual. The word, in its various meanings, is of somewhat uncertain origin. We’ve got a pretty good, albeit by no means beyond doubt, idea where the word originally comes from, and there are several plausible suggestions for how the word became adopted by the queer community.
The English word comes from the Anglo-Norman gai, but where this French word comes from is in question. There are cognates in other Romance languages, notably Provencal, Old Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian, but no likely Latin candidate for a root exists. The word is probably Germanic in origin, with the Old High German gāhi, fast or fleeting, suggested as a likely progenitor.
The Anglo-Norman word had multiple meanings which were carried over into English. It could mean happy or frolicsome, lighthearted or fickle, impetuous or reckless, attractive or amorous, or lascivious and lewd. As a noun, gai referred to a lewd person.
The first appearances of gay in the written record of English is in a marginal note to a copy of the Ancrene Riwle, a medieval guide for anchoresses. This particular copy dates to c. 1225. The line is written in pencil in the margin of one of the manuscripts by that manuscript’s original and primary scribe. It was apparently intended to be the heading of this section, but the scribe subsequently forgot to rubricate the pencil mark (i.e., copy over it in red ink):
Hwi þe Gay world is to fleon.
(Why one is to retreat from the gay world.)
The text to which this marginal note refers reads:
Nuȝe habbeð iherd mine leoue sustren
forbisne of þe alde laȝe & eken of þe ne
owe. hwi ȝe aȝen ane lif swiðe to luuien. ef
ter þe forðbisne hereð nu resuns. hwi me ach
fleo þe world achte.
(Now my beloved sisters, you have heard examples of the old law & also of the new why you should love the solitary life so much. After these examples, now hear some reasons why one ought to retreat from the world.)
The meaning of gay here is not quite certain, but given that this is a very early use, it is probably being used in the original Anglo-Norman sense of lewd or lascivious, a description of the sinful world which the anchoress should shun.
By the late fourteenth century the sense of gay meaning light-hearted or carefree was well established in English, and this sense would remain the primary sense of the word until the late twentieth century. For example, Chaucer uses gay in this sense in the poem Troilus and Criseyde in a passage where Criseyde listens to a nightingale as she is falling asleep:
A nyghtyngale, upon a cedre grene,
Under the chambre wal ther as she ley,
Ful loude song ayein the moone shene,
Peraunter in his brides wise a lay
Of love, that made hire herte fressh and gay.
That herkned she so longe in good entente,
Til at the laste the dede slep hire hente.
(A nightingale, upon a cedar green,
Under the chamber wall there where she lay,
Sang very loudly facing the moon’s sheen
Perhaps in its bird’s manner a lay
Of love, that made her heart fresh and gay.
She listened to that so long with good intent,
Till at the last the sleep of the dead took her.)
But gay meaning amorous or lascivious was also in use at this time, and this sense would also continue to the present day. In the late fourteenth century, Chaucer’s Wife of Bath uses this sense in describing her fifth husband, a passage that attests that the phenomenon of abused spouses refusing to leave their abusers is nothing new:
Now of my fifthe housbonde wol I telle.
God lete his soule nevere come in helle!
And yet was he to me the mooste shrewe;
That feele I on my ribbes al by rewe,
And evere shal unto myn endyng day.
But in oure bed he was so fressh and gay,
And therwithal so wel koude he me glose,
Whan that he wolde han my bele chose;
That thogh he hadde me bete on every bon,
He koude wynne agayn my love anon.
(Now of my fifth husband I will tell.
God let his soul never go to hell!
And yet he was to the me the greatest rogue;
That I feel on my ribs, one by one,
And will ever until my dying day.
But in our bed he was so lively and gay,
And therefore he could deceive me so well,
When he would have my “pretty thing”;
That though he had beat me on every bone,
He could win back my love straightaway.)
By the end of the eighteenth century, this amorous sense of gay had developed another, more specific sense denoting prostitution. A place or house that was gay would be a brothel. We see it in Mary Robinson’s 1799 novel The False Friend:
It was in vain I assured the person who detained me that I did not legally owe Mrs. Blonzely the sum she demanded. The charge was made for board and lodging, for which I was informed that, though under age, I might be arrested. I pleaded inability to pay the sum; declared that the promissory note had been extorted from me, and that the whole transaction was nothing less than an infamous imposture.
“That you must prove and settle in a court of law,” said the bailiff. “We shall do our duty.”
“Who, and what is Mrs. Blonzely?” said Mr. Pew calmly.
“That is not my business,” replied the bailiff. “She keeps a gay house at the west end of the town. I dare say Miss can inform you for what purpose.” Mrs. Pew changed colour, and Mr. Paisley began to whistle. The two ruffians laughed, and I was near sinking on the floor with confusion.
And at some point, this amorous / promiscuous / prostitution sense developed into another sense denoting homosexuality. Exactly when this happened is difficult to pin down. It was clearly in place by the 1920s but is likely older in queer slang, a genre of speech that was unlikely to make it into publication at the time. The difficulty in pinning down the change in meaning is also due to the word’s multiple meanings and its use as a double entendre. It’s easy to read a queer meaning into a use that would not have been intended or received that way at the time.
