ext_22896 ([identity profile] gmh.livejournal.com) wrote in [personal profile] burntcopper 2008-10-16 11:15 pm (UTC)

Right. Hughes has turned up a few, as I thought he might:

(Obviously, the year beside each term is when Hughes records it as coming into common usage:

1914: faggot
1923: fag
1924: queen
1929: homo
1929: pansy
1932: queer

also:

1942: dyke
1954: butch

(I have some reservations about the dating of 'queen'; I'm pretty sure that someone wrote of Julius Caesar that he allowed his favoured troops to call him a queen and mock him if they'd fought well.)

Other contemporary terms: chicken (US-influenced), 'friend of Dorothy' (US origin, definitely post-1939); alas, Cassell's isn't much use, because it doesn't deal with specifics on time and social connotations.

With regard to [livejournal.com profile] dario006's comment below, 'gay' was actually associated as a descriptive term for homosexual circles well before it became directly synonymous; the testimony (for the defence) of John Saul, one of the male prostitutes ('professional Sodomites') involved in the Cleveland Street Scandal included his referring to his associates as 'gay'; which at the time was used as a slang word signifying prostitution.

(One other quick note: another form of the 'fico' described below was to suck your thumb at someone; or to put it in your mouth and bite it; hence the reference in the opening scene of 'Romeo and Juliet'.)

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