GAY 'disgusting'

[RonButters at AOL.COM]

In a message dated 3/27/01 2:50:42 PM, TlhovwI at AOL.COM writes:

<< gay=disgusting?


Every time I've encountered 'gay' in slang when it did not have a
(homo)sexual meaning, it meant something like

pointless, silly, 'retarded', useless, dumb, etc.

I've never heard it used to mean 'digusting'.


-dsb >>

Well, it is not always easy to figure out just what pejoratives translate
into. When Bart Simpson's friends said, "Ewww, Bart is holding hands with a
girl, that is soooo gay!" they looked quite disgusted to me. But then part of
the problem is perhaps also with the semantic range of DISGUSTING, which in
itself overlaps significantly with, say, some of the slang uses of, e.g.,
RETARDED.