gay
adjective
full of or showing high-spirited merriment
- “when hearts were young and gay”
- “a poet could not but be gay, in such a jocund company” Wordsworth
- “the jolly crowd at the reunion”
- “jolly old Saint Nick”
- “a jovial old gentleman”
- “have a merry Christmas”
- “peals of merry laughter”
- “a mirthful laugh”
given to social pleasures often including dissipation
- “led a gay Bohemian life”
- “a gay old rogue with an eye for the ladies”
homosexual or arousing homosexual desires
noun
someone who practices homosexuality; having a sexual attraction to persons of the same sex
Origin
From Middle English gay, from Old French gai (“joyful, laughing, merry”), usually thought to be a borrowing of Old Occitan gai (“impetuous, lively”), from Gothic *𐌲𐌰𐌷𐌴𐌹𐍃 (*gaheis, “impetuous”), merging with earlier Old French jai ("merry"; see jay), from Frankish *gāhi; both from Proto-Germanic *ganhuz, *ganhwaz (“sudden”). This is possibly derived from Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰengʰ- (“to stride, step”), from *ǵʰeh₁- (“to leave”), but Kroonen rejects this derivation and treats the Germanic word as having no known etymology. cognates and sense derivation Cognate with Dutch gauw (“fast, quickly”), Westphalian Low German gau, gai (“fast, quick”), German jäh (“abrupt, sudden”). Anatoly Liberman, following Frank Chance and Harri Meier, believes Old French gai was instead a native development from Latin vagus (“wandering, inconstant, flighty”), with *[w] > [g] as in French gaine. The sense of homosexual (first recorded no later than 1937 by Cary Grant in the film Bringing Up Baby, and possibly earlier in 1922 in the poem "Miss Furr and Miss Skeene" by Gertrude Stein) was shortened from earlier gay boy ("young male prostitute") and gay cat ("homosexual boy") in underworld and prison slan...
Phrases
- be gay, do crime
- don't say gay
- fake and gay
- gay as pink ink
- gay baby jail
- gay bar
- gay basher
- pray away the gay
- pray the gay away
- sexual sense
- trans the gay away
Related words
Broader terms
WordNet 2.1 (Princeton University). Wiktionary (CC BY-SA). CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. WordNet 2.1 Copyright Princeton University. All rights reserved. Wiktionary content is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike Licence.