anne marie's query

[Alina Israeli]

Anne seems to be right.

Cassell's Dictionary of Slang (mine is 2nd edition, 2005) has several  
entries for "gay", I am not going to list them all. What follows is  
copied from the dictionary:

#6: slightly drunk, tipsy.
#7 (also gey) [mid19C-1920s] (orig. US): fine, first-rate
#8 [1980's+] (orig. US campus) a general pej. epither, stupid, ugly,  
eccentric. [a paradoxical use of the otherwise politically correct  
term GAY adj.-1 (3) as a derog.]


I'd like to add another word that may be used to mean its opposite: he  
plays a mean guitar.


On Mar 20, 2013, at 7:12 PM, Anne Fisher wrote:

> 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

Alina Israeli
Associate Professor of Russian
WLC, American University
4400 Massachusetts Ave.
Washington DC 20016
(202) 885-2387 	fax (202) 885-1076
aisrael at american.edu






-------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Use your web browser to search the archives, control your subscription
  options, and more.  Visit and bookmark the SEELANGS Web Interface at:
                    http://seelangs.home.comcast.net/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/seelang/attachments/20130320/7357c1ba/attachment.html>