And in a prison context! In “The Happy Stevens” episode of “Amos ‘n’ Andy,” Kingfish and Sapphire are arguing as usual. Kingfish tells her she is grouchy all the time. Sapphire says she’s quite happy. Kingfish responds, “There’s men in the death house gayer than you.” Probably just coincidence, but I thought I’d share.
“Darkies” had a certain license in the culture of the time. cf. Cab Calloway performing the song, “That Funny Reefer Man” in one of the “Big Broadcast” movies in the 30’s.
The earliest overt artistic use of “gay” for “homosexual” that I know of is in the song “We All Wore a Green Carnation” in the 1929 musical, Bitter Sweet, by Noel Coward. (However, the line is cryptic, to be understood only by the cognoscenti.)
I read that the origins of gay meaning homosexual were in hobo slang in the '30s. The term for a younger hobo who followed an older hobo that acted in a mentor role was a ‘gay cat’. Some folks believed there was a homosexual element to this kind of relationship, and it evolved from there.
No, it demonstrably did not have its origins in the 30’s, since I just gave an example from 1929. By 1935 it was in at least one printed dictionary of slang, and had appeared (again, cryptically) in the novel, The Cluck Abroad by Tiffany Thayer.
I have heard from a gay friend who is well educated, but not a linguist, that it is of urban late-Victorian origin, and is short for “gay lady”. But what I know is that it was established enough to joke about it in 1929 London, and that, judging from the context (Bitter Sweet is a nostalgic period piece), it was already old enough by then not to be seen as a glaring anachronism in a scene set in the 1890’s.
I recently saw “Bringing Up Baby”, with Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn, which im sure dates from the 1930’s. Grant uses the word “gay” pretty clearly in a double entendre (while in drag to boot).
I can’t seem to find the lyrics to that song with a google.com search, can you quote them here? You said it was a somewhat cryptic, it’s possible that you are misinterpreting it.
Badtz: I can’t find all the lyrics but at this site http://www.musicals101.com/gay4b.htm dealing with homosexuality in musicals, they quote from Noel Coward’s Green Carnations (from 1929’s Bitter Sweet):
Pretty boys, witty boys,
You may sneer
At our disintegration.
Haughty boys, naughty boys,
Dear, dear, dear!
Swooning with affectation . . .
And as we are the reason
For the “Nineties” being gay,
We all wear a green carnation.
The site adds the following editorial remark: (Note: In 1929 only those “in the know” used the word “gay” as a synonym for homosexual, so few would have gotten the joke.) The material before this discusses musical “queens” but this is the first reference to lyrics actually using the word “gay.”
I can’t find my copy of “Bitter Sweet” at the moment, but the above quotation, albeit rather fragmentary, is sufficient, I think, to demonstrate the point. The song is rather well known in gay/musical circles.
IIRC, the green carnation part was also a code. Wilde, among others, was known for his wearing of carnations, and I believe that many gay men wore them in a certain way to indicate being in the club.
Gertrude Stein, writing in Vanity Fair in 1922,
And I don’t think she meant just happy
I don’t know samclem. What was the context of the quotation from Gertrude Stein? What was the subject of the article?
Arnold,
This link will help. I actually got the cite from Lighter. To quote a quick snippet from my link–
[quote]
Elizabeth Fifer identifies a series of recurring images as private metaphors for bodily joy and Stein’s love for her partner Alice Toklas. Insecure about public declarations of passion, Stein turns to household images like sewing, cooking and, especially, sweets, jams, cakes and such to compensate for clearer expression.
In Miss Furr and Miss Skeene we read, To be regularly gay was to do every day the gay thing that they did every day.
I don’t think that Stein was any less explicit about her homosexuality than the Noel Coward’s Bittersweet reference.
Wilde actually put a reference to the Green Carnation Club in his original version of “The Importance of Being Ernest,” which was a four-act play, not a three-act.
The Stratford Festival put on the four-act version last year.
Fair enough samclem. The link you provide states clearly that Gertrude Stein was using the word “gay” to mean homosexual. So far it seems you win the prize for finding the earliest documented use of the word “gay” used with that meaning.
You know, we’re on the Straight Dope Message Board, people - don’t you read this site? Let’s see what Cecil himself says about it (“How did “gay” come to mean “homosexual”?”:
Esprix
Cecil said
While Cecil is right(of course) this is taking a word (gaycat)which had been in use with tramps and itinerant criminals to mean an amateur in the business and/or a young boy who acted as lookout and could be found in print since the 1890’s. It still had that same meaning in all cites which I could find in Lighter until the 1935 cite which was from a book? on prision slang which used the term as geycat sic and said it was a homosexual boy(which it probably was by that time). Only cite for geycat or gaycat meaning homosexual.
My reading of Lighter would indicate that homosexual men and women probably used the word gay to describe themselves to each other and their community from the 1890’s at least. The public , on the other hand, used words such as fairy to describe homosexuals, usually men. The term fairy used in this sense can be found as early as 1895 in Amer. Journ. Psyc. from Lighter.
One must be especially knowledgeable in what? Songs of 20’s,? Noel Coward’s work? Gay literature/matters in general?
If you have the partiular line at hand, would you post? I’m interested in determining if I’m “especially knowledgeable in this particular area”.
It’s quoted above – and everybody today knows what only a few did in 1929.
(Speaking of “Green Carnation”, I once used it as the basis of a Babylon 5 filk.)