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"faggot"</title></head><body>
<div>Cross-post from Outil on the history of "faggot".
Can anyone confirm or (more likely) disconfirm?</div>
<div>I'll cross-post relevant results back to Outil. RHHDAS
doesn't give an origin, but it does indicate (via OED cites) that an
apparently earlier meaning of 'woman' was around since the early 19th
c. and, if a wayward citing from 1591 is correctly interpreted, from
much earlier than the 19th c. There's a nice cite from
Joyce's<i> Ulysses</i> ("That old faggot Mrs. Riordan") and
a listing from an 1873 slang dictionary ('a term of reproof for women
and children: "you little faggot you"') that
illustrates a broader use as a term of abuse. No connection is
made in this listing with the non-slang 'bag of sticks' item. </div>
<div><br></div>
<div>There's a general trend for semantic change along the lines of
'woman, girl' > 'woman/girl/child' > 'effeminate male' >
'homosexual man', as illustrated by 'fairy', inter alia. It's
plausible (at least to me) based on the OED/RHHDAS data that 'faggot'
developed in similar ways. Since I don't know of any practice
of bundling and/or burning women and children, I tend to discount the
history posited below. </div>
<div><br></div>
<div>larry</div>
<div>=========================================<span
></span>=======</div>
<div>--- begin forwarded text</div>
<div>[outil post]</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>I know that we've gone over this many times, but could Ron or
someone else<br>
remind me of the origins of "faggot"? Somehow, I find
myself doubting the</div>
<div>one given below.</div>
<div><br>
---------- Forwarded message ----------</div>
<div>Date: Sun, 8 Apr 2001 13:28:27 -0400 (EDT)</div>
<div><br>
[snippage deleted]<br>
<br>
Which brings me to my other concern, the thing that really bothers me
the<br>
most. I find the use of the word "fags" to be
insulting and<br>
irresponsible. Now I know that some people believe that just as<br>
african-american people can use the "n"-word, so can gays
use the<br>
"f"-word. However, I find this to be absurd when you
learn of the origin<br>
of the word fagot to describe homosexuals. The original meaning
of the<br>
word fagot is "a bundle of sticks." Of course we can
never be sure as to<br>
the true evolution of how this word came to mean homosexual male, but
one<br>
story I have heard that is widely accepted is as follows: "As
far as how<br>
it (fagot) came to mean homosexual, there are many theories about<br>
that...the leading one being that in the old days, bigots would
bundle a<br>
homosexual man inside a fagot of wood, and then either burn him
inside it,<br>
or beat the bejesus out of him...either way, after that, they could
say<br>
"we burned/broke a fagot" and it would work as a code of
sorts." (source:<br>
http://plateaupress.com.au/wfw/faggot.htm<span
></span>) I had heard a few years ago<br>
that gays were once bundled together and then burned as if they were
a<br>
bundle of sticks and that is how fagot came to mean homosexual, which
is<br>
similar to the above definition. This shows me that the use of
the word<br>
fagot has a long history of hatred behind it and I personally would
not</div>
<div>ever use a term such as this one to describe myself...</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>--- end forwarded text</div>
<div><br></div>
<div><br></div>
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