"gay vague"

[Jonathan Lighter]

Slow news day.

JL

"Steve Kl." <stevekl at PANIX.COM> wrote:
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: "Steve Kl."
Subject: "gay vague"
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I'm nominating "gay vague" for something next January, not sure what.
Probably most unnecessary.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/19/fashion/sundaystyles/19GAYDAR.html

The weird thing about reading this article is that almost all of the
quotations sound stilted, like the reporter asked the people to use "gay
vague" in a sentence. I find it odd that that many people would
spontaneously produce this phrase to describe this "phenomenon".

(It's not new to 2005, per
http://www.commercialcloset.org/cgi-bin/iowa/portrayals.html?mode=4 it
appears to have been coined in 1997. But unless it dies a quick death, it
will be newly prominent this year thanks to the NYT exposure.)

I find it odd for something coined in 1997 that has only about 800 google
hits being featured in an article where people are dropping the term into
their quotations left and right, as though it were a phrase on everyone's
tongues. (I have never heard it uttered out loud, myself. Maybe Boston's
just too parochial.)

It's also not that productive: "gay vagueness" gets 19 hits.

New Yorkers: is this phrase bandied about on the streets the way this
article would have us believe?

-- Steve K

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