New, maybe, idea for faggot to homosexual

Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports
1

I did a couple of searches without hitting anything so here goes,

I’m reading Life on the Mississippi, by** Mark Twain**, originally published in 1883 and I came across an interesting use of fag on the last page of chapter 32. They’re describing a town that was wiped out by a change in the river, it washed it away leaving (paraphasing) neither hide nor hair, stick or shingle except the fag end of a shanty and a chimney you can see sticking up out of the water.

Now they don’t explain what the fag end of a shanty is, but if it’s synonymous with back end, tail end, bottum end, etc., the leap to homosexual, or cigarette isn’t too far.

Tried to post a link, but can’t from this location.

2

The fag end of something in that usage goes back to at least the 16th century. It is easy to find hundreds of cites going back to the early 1700s. So the leap would have to be 200 or more years.

3

Ah, well, there you go.