I was reading the article “Gay” in Wiktionary, and came across some unsourced claim that “The sense of “homosexual” is said by some to have come from an Arabic word via French” and I’m like you have got to be pulling my leg… let me get out Wehr’s Arabic dictionary and see. So here’s what I found on page 688…
غيّ ghayy trespassing, transgression, offense, error, sin; seduction, temptation, enticement, allurement
As Ms. magazine always said: No comment.
Unlikely. The etymology of “gay” is well documented. It entered the English languge in the 14th century from French. It originally meant “merry.” By 1637, it had taken on the meaning of “dissipated” and “immoral.” By 1825, it transferred to mean an immoral woman (e.g., a prostitute). Thus a “gay lady” was a prostitute. Sometime in the 1890s, it transferred to male prostitutes (e.g., “gay boy”) and by 1935 was firmly associated with homosexuals.
The path is so clear-cut that you don’t have to bring Arabic into it (well, maybe the original French came from Arabic, since the origin is unclear). It’s purely coincidence that the Arabic word is similar.
Interesting question. I’ll move it to GQ, where it’ll get more of that good ol’ GQ attention.
The earth rests on a turtle, but what does the turtle stand on? In other words, where did French get it from? Your history doesn’t address the OP because it all takes place after the point where the alleged transferral from Arabic to French would have occurred. The Arabs came to France in the 8th century.
I’m under the impression that the French use of “gai” to mean “gay” is actually something of an anglicism – that is, it postdates the use of the word “gay” in English to mean homosexual. And looking up the root of gai, it doesn’t seem to come from Arabic, but out of an old germanic word meaning “impetuous.” Or so it says here.
Oh la la. Le Trésor de la Langue Française Informatisé gives much the same Germanic etymological data as Barnhart, but placed within an impenetrable thicket of scholarly abbreviations. Knowing French is only half the battle toward knowing how to read that dictionary. I’ll just make it easy and quote from Barnhart.
Oh dear, I’m afraid “hasty, sudden” doesn’t sound very sexy compared to “sin; seduction, temptation, enticement, allurement.” In etymology it’s hard to be sure when a coincidence is just a coincidence, or if earlier speakers made wordplay which then became normalized and its origin as wordplay forgotten. Sometime around the Battle of Tours, maybe some Franks were getting drunk with their Arabic translators…
The Trésor gives the following etymology:
2nd half of the XIth century: of laughing humour (when speaking of a person)
c. 1225: that inspires joy, pleasent and warm weather
c. 1300: vert gay: yellowish green (when talking about a broth)
Might come from occitan gai, meaning petulant, merry.
Possibly from Gothic gaheis , impetuous.
Term possibly came from the influence of troubadours, or more likely, directly from Old High German.
For another opinion, there is also the Littré:
Provençal gai (merry)
Old Spanish gayo
Italian gajo
Old High German gâhi
While this more or less parallels the Trésor, Littré also mentions the following (although carefuly not drawing any conclusion): “Gaius” was a popular Roman name, which was concidered auspicious. This name became “Gavius” in early Italian languages. It is concievable that this is where gajo came from, however, intermediate forms are lacking.
Absolutely. “Gai”, in the sense of “merry” is still commonly used (e.g. “Ça n’a pas l’air très gai!” – “It doesn’t seem much fun!”) It’s only very recently that French speakers started associating the word with “homosexual”. When it’s used in this sense, there’s confusion as to what spelling is proper. For instance, these folks go by Mouvement d’Affirmation des jeunes Gais et lesbiennes. However, this organisation calls itself Association Lozérienne Gays et Lesbiennes. That there is no concensus on how to spell the word points to its recent adoption.
For what it’s worth, “gais et lesbiennes” returns 152,000 French languages hits on Google. “Gays et lesbienne”, returns 485,000 hits.
Interesting, no cites, but I recently hear that troubadours and the ‘Courtly Love’ stuff came from the Moors in Spain.
Actually, my condensation of the Trésor etymology isn’t clear. The hypothesis is that troubadours served as a vector for the word moving from germanic languages to French. The source for this assertion is the Französisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch (Dictionary of Gallo-roman etymology), volume 16, p. 9. If anyone has access to it and wants to check what they have to say about it.
Preach it! And if there’s any key to the abbreviations anywhere, I can’t say as they’ve made it easy to find.
The OP was right: the term came from gay houris!
It should be noted that the Trésor de la langue française is firstly a printed reference. I don’t have the 16 volumes at hand, so I can’t verify, but I’m pretty sure there’s a legend that was left out of the digital version.