I was watching Gladiator this weekend (for the 900th time - GAWD Russell Crowe is HOT) when I heard a line that went something like this, “The two giraffes you sold me did nothing but walk around, you sold me queer giraffes!”
Question - Was the word “queer” really used as a term to mean homosexual way back in the time of the Roman Empire or did the movie makers goof? I thought it was a relatively new term.
This thread details some of the other historical inaccuracies of Gladiator. It’s a movie, for entertainment purposes only. A great movie at that. I’ve watched it quite a few times myself.
Can’t resist:
In the Roman Empire they spoke many languages.
The one they definately did not speak was the English you heard in the movie. In that sense, a good 98% of the words you heard represent a goof.
This just in from the New Scientist!
**Male giraffes indulge in prolonged bouts of affectionate “necking”, often followed by mounting and culminating in apparent orgasm. **
I read the link but my girafe question was not mentioned. I do realize that English wasn’t spoken in ancient Rome (ya smartass :D).
Let me ask a different way.
When was the word “queer” first used to mean homosexual? Has it been around since ancient times?
That’s why I said “other” inaccuracies. 
Queer has existed as an English word only since the 16th century. It has meant “homosexual” only since the early 20th century.
I’m not sure what you want to know. Are you asking if there was a Latin word that meant both “odd” and “homsexual”? I don’t know the answer to that.
This is what I was looking for:
I made the comment to a friend who was watching the video with me that I thought the homesexual meaning was fairly new, he said it has been around for centuries. I had a feeling I was right ::
:: and I knew the brains of the SDMB would be able to verify it for me.
Thanks!
<--------- Leafing through my dog-eared copy of “McGee’s Guide To Flamboyance”…hmm…GOT IT !
" Liberacecus ". Noun. Old Latin Name 
Cartooniverse
-------Disclaimer------- The previous was meant purely as satire and not to impugn the fine name of Liberace or any other overdressed lounge lizards. Thank you.
CartooniverseYou do realize that there are still little old ladies around that would hit you over the head with their handbags if you so much as suggested that “that nice boy” Liberace was gay, don’t you?
I don’t know much about the gay lifestyle, but I’ll make a guess as to how “queer” came to mean “homosexual”.
Some time ago I heard the phrase “He’s queer for ____.” It would seem to me that the sentence is shorthand for “He’s a queer (odd) fellow, in that he likes ____ to a strong degree.” I suppose someone could be “queer for bungee jumping”, as bungee jumping would be considered by some to be a nutty pasttime. But somewhere along the line people started saying, “He’s queer for boys,” and “queer” became associated with homosexuality.
Or it could be that gay people are kind of odd
I meant homosexual, which we all know is different that being attracted to houses.
Ah, the web, the source for all things useful and useless.
I’ve found this site,
http://www.obscure.org/obscene-latin/vocabulary.html
which has a bunch of obscene Latin words.
This might help a little
I don’t know when “queer” became a synonym for “homosexual”, but I can tell you that many, if not most, Roman males were bisexual. Julius Caesar was scandalously referred to as “every woman’s man and every man’s woman”. Also, I read somewhere (don’t remember the source, sorry!) that, of the “Twelve Caesars”, only one (Claudius, if I recall correctly) was exclusively heterosexual. The rest were either homosexual or bisexual.
In other words, the Romans would have considered there to be nothing “queer” about homosexual sex at all.
[flirting]
They might have felt differently if they’d met Diane, of course.
[/flirting0
I’m sorry, I don’t see anything in this context that suggests the ‘homosexual’ interpretation of ‘queer’.
I see ‘there’s something wrong with these giraffes, they don’t do anything but walk’.
Or is there some context here that you’ve neglected to mention, assuming we’ve all seen the movie, like they were supposed to be a mating pair or some such thing?
How bizarre…
I just read that fact about Claudius about 2 hours ago.
Despite this, he seems to be one of the more normal Julio-Claudian emperors. Of course, considering that he was preceded by Calgula and followed by Nero, I think that it would have been rather difficult for Claudius to be a “weirdo”.
I’ve been reading about these guys all night. Absolutely-freakin’-lutely bizarre.
Shudder…
Diane, I think the filmmakers did expect the audience to make that connection even though, as you suspect, it would have been a total anachachronism. The word “queer” is, I think, of obscure origin but it has always meant something along the lines of strange, suspect, not quite right. It was often used to describe fake money before its primary modern meaning of homosexual. I’m pretty sure the meaning of the word queer shifted in that direction either during the 1890s or at some point afterwards b/c it wasn’t till the 1890s that “homosexual” was itself in use.
In any case, the place you should look is the Oxford English Dictionary. This will give you a complete etymology of the word including the first time the word was used and how it changed since that time. It’s actually a lot of fun to read it. You can find it at a good library, certainly any college or university library. It also exists online but it’s not free; usually you have to be at a place (like a college library) that provides you with access to it.
Good luck with with your query (no pun intended!).
If we assume that ‘queer’ in this context means ‘screwed up’, then what is wrong with a couple of giraffes that just walk around? Are they supposed to be attack giraffes or something?
Great stuff, huh?
Caveat: if you’re reading Suetonius’s The Twelve Caesars, do so with a grain of salt. Some of the more sensationalist stuff can’t be verified (it’s not necessarily false, but it’s gossip).
Suetonius was kind of like the “tell all” biographer of his day. It’s interesting reading, though!