The Gay Nineties

[Lynne Murphy]

> This is a real goody -- another gleaning from my word-of-the-semester
> project in HOTEL:  A student whose word was "gay" said that before
> this semester she had always assumed that "the Gay Nineties" was a
> reference to the 1990s, when "so many people came out of the closet."
>    --Natalie Maynor (maynor at ra.msstate.edu)
>

She's not entirely wrong--the phrase was used to refer to the 1990s a
lot (especially in the early part of the decade) in the gay press.  It
might have made some inroads into the mainstream press.

Lynne

Dr M Lynne Murphy
Lecturer in Linguistics
School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

phone +44-(0)1273-678844
fax   +44-(0)1273-671320