[Ads-l] Fw: Further Thoughts on the 1931 Use of "Go Gay"

[Dan Goncharoff]

The search for euphemism is.never ending.

On Fri, Oct 16, 2020, 10:00 AM Shapiro, Fred <fred.shapiro at yale.edu> wrote:

> Not far-fetched at all.
>
> Fred Shapiro
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> on behalf of
> James Landau <00000c13e57d49b8-dmarc-request at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Sent: Friday, October 16, 2020 9:52 AM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Subject: Re: Further Thoughts on the 1931 Use of "Go Gay"
>
> On Thu, 15 Oct 2020 00:36:09 Zone+0000  "Shapiro, Fred" <
> fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU> posted:
> <begin quote>A few days ago I posted about a 1931 headline using the
> phrase "go gay," in an article that was very much about homosexuality in
> the publication New Broadway Brevities.  I opined that this was the
> earliest known use of the term "gay" meaning homosexual.
>
> Some cooler heads have suggested that this was not a specific reference to
> homosexuality, but rather simply an instance of a general usage of "go gay"
> meaning to become flamboyant.
> <end quote>
> A far-fatched suggestion:  did "gay" acquire the meaning of male
> homosexual because of the impression that some (not all) male homosexuals
> are flamboyant in dress and manner?
>
> James Landau
> jjjrlandau at netscape.com
>
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