I am reading this English book from the 50’s in which the narrator makes reference to someone from his grammar school as being his “study fag”. Do the English still use that term? Last I knew, a “fag” was still a cigarette (and don’t even get me started on the genesis of its use to describe homosexuals).
Well, there was this flamboyant teaching assistant one time …
One of the last times I voluntarily chuffed down a cigarette or two was in 1979, right after this moronic tech came into my lab and flooded a partially assembled gas plumbing manifold with 100% silane.
[ul]Silane (SiH[sub]4[/sub] Compound name - silicon tetrahydride): Spontaneous pyrophor, combusts instantly on contact with air. Large accumulations of vapor phase silane will detonate like gasoline fumes. Micro-fine silicon dioxide granules result from reaction in air and may contribute to silicosis after repeated exposure.[/ul]Two cigarettes later and my nerves were still a little raw. It’s hard to soar with eagles and all that …
You need a British dictionary:
Note that “public school” actually means “private school” in the UK (I don’t know why).
Or a searchable archive of answers written by the smartest person in the universe to questions on all sorts of interesting topics.
Now where might one find such a thing? Hmm…
Well, I wouldn’t say I’m the smartest person in the universe, but…
Oh - you meant Cecil. Never mind…
I recall hearing that this term referred to an underclassman in the antiquated school system of England, one that has, for the most part, been updated. Previously, a first year student was made to run errands, care for the clothing and belongings of, and act as valet to a senior scholar. Of course, during the course of its era in British school society, this system was abused and reforms were attempted. I recall reading an article as recently as the '80’s that there were reports of abuse, and attempts to revive the class structure. The article had an antique cartoon that showed a student stretched out on bed smoking a pipe while a boy near him polished his shoes. An older gentleman stood near with a questioning look. The caption read something like “Oh, that’s my fag. He does what I tell him.” My first impression when I read about this was that it involved sexual abuse also, but there was no mention of it. I also thought this might have been the root of the pejorative term, but again, I undertand it was not.
I must caution that I’m working off of my memory, which may be unreliable, since I don’t know much about the situation mentioned, and haven’t heard much about it since I read about it years ago.
I’m sittin in my study, and I just smoked a fag, so yes.
As I understand it, probably incorrectly, “fag” came to denote homosexual men in a pejorative way subsequent to the time during which they were literally burned at the stake. :mad:
jjimm: 
- was it a filtered or unfiltered fag? 
Um… I’m a sixth-former in a British public (ie private) school. I don’t have a study, I have a common room. But I do have an ickle firstie to run down to the kitchen and get the milk for me. Does that count?
This is correct, from what I’ve read. Moreover, the actual word, “fag” originally meant the bundle of thin sticks used to start fires, which is probably why cigarettes were named that way, due to their resemblance. One can make the connection to the slur, and the orginal meaning.
There was a thread not so long ago in which we tried to figure out the origin of the term “fag” with the meaning “homosexual.” It’s pretty clear that it doesn’t come from any practice of burning homosexuals in the Middle Ages (even if that really happened). It may have come from the use of the word to denote younger students serving as servants in English public schools, but there’s no proof of that.
The Etymology of “Faggot”: It’s not just a thread, it’s a staff report:
As this is CS I feel safe making this hijack…
The first time I encountered the word ‘fag’ in the context of ‘underclassman who does things for upperclassmen’ was when I was reading Sandman: Season of Mists, and the dead upperclassmen said ‘now <insert name of the third in the group> will have to fag for us’…given the nature of the three in question, I could easily see them using it in the American context - unwillingly on the 'fag’s part (particularly since the dominant two were forcing him down).
It did make a lot more sense once I found out what fag meant in UK-school-speak.
Actually, I’m quite sure it didn’t.
If you can get a hold of Rohl Dahl’s autobiographies, he goes into some details of his public school experiences in being a study fag among other things.
It’s worth noting that, in the public school sense, fag is also a verb, meaning “to act as a fag”.
In a possibly related definition it also means “a piece of drudgery; a wearisome or unwelcome task” or “tire out, exhaust” or even just “toil”. I’m guessing the public school definition is derived from the “drudgery” one, but that’s extremely speculative; however, it would suggest (as my dictionary posits) that there may be an etymological connection with “flag” (as in “to grow tired”). If so, it would be separate from the fagot derivation of “faggot”.