ghey/ghay

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

one of my undergraduates has pointed me to the TechIMO website, where a
posting of march 2003 about spyware referred to the material that
appeared on the screen as a "gay thing" and "really homo".  this led to
a complaint that those remarks were offensive and the predictable
counter:

   "gay is a term kids use that means stupid.  When it's used as in the
post it means this stupid thing.  It has nothing to do with
homosexuality."

and two further responses, one counseling care about audience and
context, the other maintaining:

   The term is like "phat" and should be so spelled:
   ghey

the original poster then amended "homo" to "stupid" (but left "gay"
in!).

my student notes that google gives 33,600 hits for "ghey" and 2,710 for
"ghay", virtually all in the relevant sense.

google's top hit on "ghey" is for www.urbandictionary.com, where
readers are invited to supply their own definitions for slang words and
expressions.  there are 49 definitions (and a couple .wav files with
sample pronunciations).  these are all over the map.  some respondents
maintain that it preserves the ambiguity of "gay" ('stupid, annoying,
lame' or "homosexual"); some say it's offensive no matter what ("A
different spelling of "gay" that some idiots thought up and pretend
that it's less derogatory to homosexuals"); most declare it to be a
totally different word from "gay", with only the 'stupid, annoying,
lame' sense ("gay but not homosexual", as one respondent puts it); and
still others say it's *really* gay ('homosexual'), denoting sissiness
or "so gay that it is even misssspelled [sic]" or "the gay way to say
gay" ("Billy is gay because he uses the word ghey"), though the last
two might be read either way.

the ADS archives produce only one instance of "ghey" or "ghay" -- the
former, in a 5 september 2003 posting by anne marie hamilton on "pwn",
in which a posting to PlanetSide gets pulled in with stuff on "pwn".
in its entirety: "you gus [sic] are ghey".

so, now i have citations for all of the following with the 'stupid,
annoying, lame' sense:
   gay, ghey, ghay, homo, faggot, fag
not yet "fairy" or "poof" or "pansy" or "fruit" or "sissy".  with
"queer" it's *really* hard to tease out the meanings.

arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)