I don’t want to insult anyone’s intelligence, but I have to say, there seems to be an abject denial of the obvious in trying to ascertain the derivation of the term “faggot” for homosexual males. Truly, nowadays it doesn’t just need to apply to effeminate homosexual males; anyone who comes off as gay will do. And why “faggot?” Bundle of sticks? In Portuguese, and maybe other languages, one of the slang terms for a dick or cock is the same as the word for a stick or rod. Pau, in Portuguese. Put a couple of skinny (i.e. boyish, effeminate) fags together, there’s just an awful lot of linearity there, a lot of sticks, rods, and, well, that sounds a lot like a faggot to me. That’s the interpretation I have always known, and the only one that makes any sense to me.
What’s obvious about transvestites in 1914 in the US being called “fagots” to mean “sissies?” What did people in Portugal call homosexuals in 1914?
[sub]As an aside: damn! That’s the best one I ever did. I’m pretty happy with that report. I may be inspired to do another one. But don’t tell Dex. 
[/sub]
Fred Phelps claims they use use the word fag, short for faggot “because it is a metaphor chosen by the Holy Ghost to describe a group of people who BURN in their lust one toward another, and who FUEL God’s wrath.”
I would have thought that the term came, not from the “bundle of sticks” use, but from the use of the term as meaning “to act as a servant to an older boy” used at some private boarding schools.
If Phelps is as much of an authority on the field of etymology as he is on Christian theology then we can consider the discussion closed.
Or otherwise, not.
Stranger
It was thrown around pretty freely in 1940’s Tom Brown’s School Days.
I think it came from the British school tradition of ‘fagging.’ Officially, an older boy’s fag would do chores and such for him, but there was a rather notorious abuse of the system in many schools, and fags were expected to provide much more… personal… services to the older boy. Not too far a leap to start using the word to refer to anyone who provides such services.
The British public schools theory comes up every time this topic gets discussed, but there’s a problem: “Fag” and “Faggot” to mean “homosexual” are American usages that have only reached England in the past few years. (The American origin of the term, BTW, is discussed in the Staff Report – I’m not sure that everyone who’s commenting has read it.) Why would a British school term lead to an American usage unknown in Britain?
Because it was also, as the report you so carefully read stated, a usage in certain American upper crust schools until the mid-1800s. So it isn’t all that impossible for the term to have made the jump not over in England, but rather here in America. Indeed, the jump in usage could help explain why the term’s usage died out, having obtained a connotation not acceptable in the normal course of male with male relationships.
I suspect the stronger argument against this connection is one having to do with time. The term appears in print used to mean male homosexual starting in the early 1900s, but falls out of use to describe younger males doing favors for older males in America by the late 1800s. That’s quite a gap to bridge with non-print usage. :eek:
I do want to sneak my favorite usage of the term in here: " ‘Aiee!’ cried the narc, brandishing a faggot. ‘Aiee!’ cried the faggot."
Or something to that effect. 
Well, yeah, of course I read the part about it having been used at Harvard in the English sense in the early 1800s, but since it was no longer used that way at the time the “homosexual” usage appeared in print, and had not been for decades, it did not seem relevant, as you yourself seem to be conceding.
Other senses are also mentioned in the article including the use of the term to describe underclassmen servicing older boys.
I find a similarity in the use of the words, Bitch and Bitchy. (Not that they are used to mean a homosexual male, necessarily.)
For a long time it was used exclusively to mean a sour-tempered, difficult or moody woman.
Eventually it came to refer to sexually subservient men, theoretically from its use in prison slang.
Actually, “bitch”, applied to a woman, originally meant “slut” (which, for what it’s worth, originally meant “lousy housewife”). It shifted to the current meaning within the last century.
I have long suspected that Yiddish “burch” (to complain) may have had some influence on that.
As to “faggot”, kindly remember that it is a fact that “faggot” was earlier used in English to mean “annoying animal” and “annoying woman”, and that this use actually overlapped with “homosexual”. I’ve encountered it in an old children’s book, myself.
“Floop!” suggested the tar pit.
RR
I would genuinely like to see a cite for these claims, and a copy of that kiddie book with the word faggot in it. (If you have one with a slutty housewife that would be good too.)
There are cites enough in the O.E.D. I don’t, alas, remember where I encountered “faggot” in a children’s book. It might have been “Handy Mandy in Oz”.
I don’t know if this helps or hinders, but this is from the 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue