anne marie's query

[Anne Fisher]

Hello Anne Marie, and fellow Seelangers,

Just putting in my two cents - in my Oklahoma middle- and high school in
the 1980's, "gay" was definitely a common pejorative. "That's so gay" or
"He's so gay" used this way signified strong disapproval and had nothing to
do with sexual orientation (excepting, of course, the speakers' implicit
assumption that being gay was bad, stupid, lame, etc., hence the
"metonymical" usage).

Not sure what counts as recent in terms of quickly-evolving
slang/pejorative usage, but I'd say this one has been around in the US for
at least 20 years. I haven't heard it as much lately, which could be good
news, or just proof that I haven't been around middle-schoolers lately.

Thanks,

Annie

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: anne marie devlin <anne_mariedevlin at hotmail.com>
Date: 2013/3/20

--- snip ---

It reminds me somewhat of a recent semantic change of the word 'gay' in
British - and to a lesser extent - Irish English.  It's used by children
and teenagers to mean 'bad' or 'undesirable'.

--- snip ---

-- 
Anne O. Fisher, Ph.D.
Russian>English Interpreter and Translator
anne.o.fisher at gmail.com
440-986-0175

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