[Ads-l] Tea, and more

[Daphne Preston-Kendal]

On 1 Jul 2024, at 16:40, Bill Mullins <amcombill at hotmail.com> wrote:

> The contents are available on the Internet Archive:
> https://archive.org/details/blk_15/page/n32/mode/1up?q=%22spill+the+t%22

Aha, thanks!

IA also has an earlier ‘spill the T’ 1985 – also a black gay author, Billi Gordon – with an etymological tall tale:
https://archive.org/details/billigordonsyouv00bill/page/2/mode/2up?q=%22spill+the+T%22

Laurence Horn mentioned ‘tea’ as in ‘tea room’ as gay slang, but it might be worth also considering the ‘tea dance’ as perhaps etymologically relevant:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_dance_(gay_event)

And of course there is T as in trans, T as in testosterone (as taken by trans men), and tea was apparently British gay slang for urine (according to Rodgers’s Queen’s Vernacular as quoted in GDoS).


Daphne

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