"gay" redux

[Jonathan Lighter]

It seemed unequivocal when I unearthed it in context at NYPL in ca1971.
Admittedly the stream-of-consciousness style raises a doubt.

It might mean "flamboyantly homosexual" (i.e., be  semantically
transitional). But it does fall short of being absolutely unambiguous.

The novel is a sub-rosa gay novel written by two gay authors for a gay
audience. IIRC, the speaker is...gay.

JL

On Sat, Nov 3, 2012 at 8:41 AM, Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at babel.ling.upenn.edu>wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: "gay" redux
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Tue, Oct 30, 2012 at 8:40 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> >
> > Despite the existence of a seemingly unequivocal 1933 ex. in HDAS (from a
> > sub rosa publication read by few), which makes the question of "gay" in
> > _Bringing up Baby_ less crucial, the sense doesn't become prominent in
> > print till the late '60s - even though homosexuality was widely and
> openly
> > discussed after the appearance of the Kinsey Report on the "Human Male"
> > (i.e., mostly white, middle-class, American college guys) twenty years
> > earlier.
>
> Sorry, in what way is the 1933 ex. (from Charles Henri-Ford and Parker
> Tyler's _The Young and the Evil_) "seemingly unequivocal"? I agree
> with Ron Butters that it seems pretty equivocal:
>
>
> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind1109D&L=ADS-L&D=0&F=P&I=-3&P=20499
>
> --bgz
>
> --
> Ben Zimmer
> http://benzimmer.com/
>
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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
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