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Like most words in most languages, “gay” has an interesting and complicated history that moves across cultures, definitions and meanings before eventually settling on one culturally agreed upon definition, the definition that refers to the Gay Community as defined in section 20a. Etymology is an often disputed and tangled science, and “gay,” like virtually every word that originates and has been imported into the English language, has shifted meaning over time before becoming today’s word.
Early uses of the word gay
The Anglo-Norman gai and gaye, along with the Middle French gai was used as early as the second half of the 11th century throughout Western Europe to refer to people and incidents that ranged from happy and cheerful to those that would be described as carefree, frivolous and later even licentious, lewd and lascivious (OED). At the risk of oversimplification, the various regional variants of “gay” throughout the middle ages generally focused on “gay” as a sense relating to a variety of qualities ranging from noble and beautiful to bright, and lively (all in use in the 1300s). At a time when mass communication was non-existent, it is understandable that the same word could have so many simultaneous meanings that would vary regionally. As an example, “gay” at various moments in time would refer to “finely dressed,” simply those people who could be described as “carefree,” and to other divergent meanings ranging from the science of poetry to a description of a dog’s tail carried high and erect (OED).
In the 1400s, “gay” was widely in use to refer to “Wanton, lewd, lascivious” behavior. This sense of gay as “dedicated to social pleasures” or “frivolous” and “hedonistic” behaviors helps shed light on the transition of “gay” from its earlier 12th-15th century meanings to the modern and dominant understanding of gay as both a noun and adjective referring to a specific group of individuals whose gender identities and sexual orientation are outside of the norms defined for heterosexual behavior of the larger society, and thus were judged harshly by that society.
Gay used to for homosexuality
As cited in the OED, “Gay by the early 20th century progressed to its current reference to a sexuality that was non-heterosexual. Writing in 1953, D.W. Cory explains: “In France as early as the sixteenth century the homosexual was called gaie; significantly enough, the feminine form was used to describe the male. The word made its way to England and America, and was used in print in some of the more pornographic literature after the First World War. Psychoanalysts recorded that homosexual patients were calling themselves gay in the nineteen-twenties, and certainly by the nineteen-thirties it was the most common word in use among homosexuals themselves” (qtd. in OED).
Language is anything but stable and fixed. All words in all languages across the globe shift meaning over time and “gay” is certainly no exception to this rule. What this brief etymology of the term suggests however is that at least since the early 20th century “gay” had morphed from describing a serious of attributes ranging from lively, to happy, to sexually promiscuous that coalesced around a particular gender identity. Notably this transition of usage of “gay,” while commonly thought to be a US American invention was actually a global undertaking. The word “gay,” in fact, is used without any translation in a diverse set of world languages including French, Italian, Portuguese and many Spanish-speaking nations. In many other languages, including German, while a unique translation of gay exists officially, “Schwul,” absolutely all German-speaking individuals would understand the English translation “gay” and most are using it. Not surprisingly, the availability of global communications technologies, like the Internet, has made agreed-upon definitions of terms like “gay” possible. Whereas once regional, national and other localized variations would be able to survive, today’s instant and global communications infrastructure makes cohesion around particular meanings more inevitable.
Gay as an umbrella term
The term “gay” today is a term that has solidified around encompassing several sub-communities of individuals whose gender identities and sexual orientation are outside of the norms defined for heterosexual behavior of the larger society. Within these sub-communities even further classifications and distinctions can be made that further classify its members but are equally comfortable identifying as gay, particularly to those outside their own sub-communities. As an example, it has become commonplace for celebrities to acknowledge their homosexuality with the now routine declaration of “Yup, I’m gay” on the cover of newsmagazines as the comedienne Ellen Degeneres did when she “came out” on the cover of TIME magazine.
Notably, “gay” is used to super-identify all these groups and circumstances. Whether homosexual, bisexual, transgender, intersex or ally, all members of the Gay Community march in the “gay pride parade” read the same “gay media” and fight for the same “gay rights.” Gay has become the prevalent term in how members of this community refer to themselves when speaking about themselves as demonstrated by the large number of organizations that use the term globally.
Gay means gay
While it is true that “gay” has at various points in history signified other meanings, the current definition is not only the most prominent and widely used, but also the most stable that indicates permanence and longevity. Not only are other uses of the term gay archaic (e.g. the gay nineties), they also do not name any communities. When references are made to the Gay Community, there can be not confusion for any other possible meaning of the term. At the present time the string “gay” when used as a noun is understood to indicate a member of the Gay Community (as defined in section 20a) and has no other meaning. This is not only true in the English language it is true in all other languages where the word gay is used to indicate a member of the Gay Community.
As a word in the modern lexicon, the word gay has only one meaning as a noun – to be a member of the Gay Community. As an adjective, however, it still has meanings that have largely slipped into archaic or historic use. To understand other possible meetings of the term in the English language, one needs to test using substitution as is often done in language theory (eg. can the word ‘happy’ be substituted for the word ‘gay’ in the normal sentence). When one utters the phrase ‘I think he is gay’ one cannot assume the substituted ‘I think he is happy’. And if there were to be any question, it would be followed up with something such as: do you mean gay as in ‘gay’ or do you mean gay as in ‘happy’? The initial presumption is that gay refers to a member of the Gay Community.
Additionally while there are a few historical references such as Gay Nineties – reference to the 1890s, there are very few remaining uses, and there is no chance of the term being misunderstood in the context of gTLD usage. In the context of new gTLD applications, the name does not have any connotation beyond the Gay Community. The idea that one would look at a domain such as lawyer.gay or health.gay and misunderstand that to mean lawyer.happy or health.happy is inconceivable.
OED – Oxford English Dictionary