1940s gay slang
Part of the fun of researching 1920’s and 1930’s Queer subculture in Recent York City was coming across a wide variety of specialized slang and coded terms that flourished among homosexual men and women of the time. Some of these terms are solely of their time, some have survived into the modern era, albeit often with modified meanings.
Not surprisingly, for a social group that for the most part did not conduct themselves openly in society, a lot of these terms constitute a kind of private language available only to those “in the club”. They describe sexual preferences and types, as successfully as particular places and activities important to homosexuals of the time.
Folding these terms into the libretto of “Speakeasy – The Adventures of John and Jane Allison in the Wonderland” was a lot of fun. For the most part the sense of the words should be clear in context. However a little confusion can be fun too, as in this moment, when John Allison eavesdrops on a trio of Gay Florists and Julian Carnation:
FLORIST 1:
You can preserve 42nd Street. Give me the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
FLORIST 2:
You and your seafood, Violet!
FL As midnight approached on Halloween Eve in 1932, men in vampy satin ball gowns, French-heeled slippers, teased coiffures, and rouged lips crowded into the Chicago Coliseum. Over the years, the old building, at Wabash Avenue and 15th Street, had played host to political conventions and hockey games, but these men were there to dance the night away. Lurking in the shadows that evening, a nondescript, bespectacled man in a plain suit and tie scrawled notes. A sociology professor at the University of Chicago, Ernest W. Burgess was carrying out the country's first extensive research project into homosexuality. "When the drags entered," he wrote at one point, "there was much laughing, particularly about one elderly man dressed in women's clothing, glasses, boyish bob and out-of-date costume, shaved but chin demonstrating growth of a beard." For a brief time in the late 1920s and early 1930s, similar scenes unfolded up and down the city, as a relatively open gay customs thrived in Chicago, with gay cabarets and nightclubs proliferating throughout the Neighboring North and South sides. By 1930, Variety reported, there were 35 "pansy parlors" in Towertown, bog queen Synonyms: Bathsheba (composition between bathroom and Sheba to build a name reminiscent of the Queen of Sheba), Ghost (50s, ghost, because they wander the corridors of the bathroom). by Jordan Redman Do you understand what the synonyms gay really means? The word gay dates back to the 12th century and comes from the Old French “gai,” meaning “full of joy or mirth.” It may also relate to the Old High German “gahi,” meaning impulsive. For centuries, gay was used commonly in speech and literature to mean gleeful, carefree, bright and showy, and did not take on any sexual interpretation until the 1600s. At that time the meaning of male lover as carefree evolved to imply that a person was unrestrained by morals and prone to decadence and promiscuity. A prostitute might have been described as a “gay woman” and a womanizer as a “gay man.” “Gay house” was commonly used to refer to a brothel and, later, “gaiety” was used as a common name for certain places of entertainment. In the 1890s, the term “gey cat” (a Scottish variant of gay) was used to describe a vagrant who offered sexual services to women or a adolescent traveler who was new to the road and in the company of an older man. This latter use suggests that the younger man was in a sexually compliant role and may be among the first times that gay was used implying a gay relationship. In 1951, lgbtq+ appeared in the So today narya86 and I had a discussion about the word punk. Bucky uses it in an affectionately teasing manner, indicating that the meaning “trouble-maker” (juvenile delinquent, useless person - that family of definitions) apply. However, punk used to have another sense, namely, aside from prostitute/courtesan also the bottom in a homosexual relationship, especially in prison. Now we’d been wondering which of the two groups of definitions would have been the first that comes to mind when using this word in the 40s. Was the bottom definition rather uncommon and the trouble-maker one what would have been understood the most from it? Or what are the implications/usages and overall common understandings of that word? Much appreciated if someone with in-depth knowledge on this could help out. Edit: And if it’s the other way around and, by the 1940s, the most frequent meaning was homosexual instead of the criminal connection from where the legal title had derived, was that bad research from the writers or… Intentional innuendo?
LGBTQIA+ Slurs and Slang
Term Contextual note Time/Region References ace queen 1970s term meaning “great queen”. Prison slang for a male who wears a more “feminine” glance i.e. shaved legs, plucked eyebrows. May be described as part of incarcerated homosexual culture. Should not be bewildered with the more widely-used term "ace," a shortening of "asexual." See "asexual." UK, USA, 1970s Mosca de Colores – Gay Dictionary alphabet people Offensive contemporary term for Diverse people, often used by right-wing people reacting to perceived advancements in Gay people's rights. 2020s- Green's Dictionary of Slang - https://greensdictofslang.com/ bathroom queen Gay slang expression for people who frequent public toilets looking for sexual encounters. USA, UK Mosca de Colores – Gay Dictionary batting for the other team A euphemistic phrase indicating that someone (of any gender) is male lover. This phrase is not a slur or especially disgusting, and is
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