gaydirt -- new word?

[Jonathan Lighter]

"Gaydar" does not appear in Bruce Rodgers's vast collection of The Queens' Vernacular (1972), though it seems to be exactly the sort of word that he would have wished to include.

The HDAS team didn't spot it until 1994, too late for Vol. I.

JL

"Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU> wrote:
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: "Arnold M. Zwicky"
Subject: Re: gaydirt -- new word?
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On Oct 3, 2004, at 6:09 PM, John Baker wrote:

> Google Groups has from 3/22/1989:...
>
> Washington Post has from 4/23/1993:...

two different questions: when did "gaydar" arise and spread within the
gay community, and when did it spread into wider usage (insofar as it
has)?

i know how fallible memory is, but i'm pretty sure i was using the word
in the 70s. (i became active in gay rights groups in 1971 and hung out
with gayfolk from about 1964.) lord knows i'm not going to try to go
through my correspondence from those days...

arnold


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