Homosexual takes a long time to say, “gay” is more efficient.
Gay is from the Middle English/French gai, meaning lighthearted, brightly colored, etc.
Gay used to mean ‘Happy/Joyful’, ‘Colourful Clothing’.
The etymology of the word ‘Gay’ isn’t half as fun as the etymology of the words ‘Silly’ and ‘Nice’. You really wouldn’t want to call someone from the 12th Century ‘Nice’; certainly not if he was bigger than you and you’d like your pretty face intact. It used to mean ‘Stupid’.
Damn, I know I’ve heard something about the origin of the term, but it was years ago… something about some artist or another who signed his works as Sir Gay… Grrr, I can’t remember! ><
my question is, when did “gay” become “gh3y” and then later “gh2k5”
Gai in Modern French means happy, joyful or brightly colored.
I suspect around the same time the interweb became popular.
I think its a self-claimed title in many ways, Cala. Though I can’t be certain of it, I believe it might have been a bit of a code-word of sorts, a term that stuck even when it evolved into a common term.
I have heard the term “confirmed bachelor” used as a more current codeword, and my guess might be that gay went from being a codeword to a common word. No, I have no Wikipedia to back that up, but it makes a lot of sense, given the harmlessness of “bright and colorful” and almost mismatching of putting the word in a description of a person; Imagine if I said, “Oh don’t worry about me, I’m pastel.” It would seem odd, but unless you were part of the culture that knew what pastel means, you would write it off rather quickly as just an odd statement.
Note: see Cala, given enough time and threats, we can talk almost seriously… until [strike]BlueMageOne[/strike] someone funny posts again, at least.
Um, Delita, “gay” is more associated with “light-hearted” than with light colors.
Come on, work with me here on the codeword concept.
That sounds about right. I figured that since one meaning of Gay is bright or flamboyant colors, that the often flamboyant attitudes of homosexuals encouraged the description of them as being gay. As time passed, the description just ended up being the name. I guess, like, shits a certain color, and people often see something that is colored like shit, so they say “hey, it looks like shit”.
Amazing to see how many people who post in a thread dont seem to have read any of it whatsoever 
Mind if I point to a wikipedia article as well?
Anyways, on topic: Bright colors. Happy. Tres gai. Look at eden. Nuff said. Dont know how many of those they had in the nineteenth century, but I guess it came close