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Adjective: homosexual
- 2020, Barry Reay, Trans America: A Counter-History:
The gay trans man was barely acknowledged when Sullivan was transitioning; he was refused entry to the Stanford Program twice, primarily because he insisted on his same-sex (male) rather than opposite-sex attractions. [...] In the late 1990s, David Schleifer interviewed five gay trans men, [...] In all cases, their desire for men (as men) was homosexual. [...]
Adjective: (of an institution or group) intended for gay people
- 1982, Joel Best, David Luckenbill, Organizing Deviance, page 80:
A bar typically is a city's first gathering place for homosexuals. Where homosexuality is deviant, the gay bar offers a solution to several problems. Since most heterosexuals do not know which bars are gay, homosexuals can go [...]
Adjective: happy
- Alexander Pope
Belinda smiled, and all the world was gay.
- Gray
Gay hope is theirs by fancy fed.
- 1816, A visit to Paris in 1814 , being a review of the moral, political, intellectual and social condition of the French capital,... by John Scott,... 4thr. edition...
The ladies gay and gracious, the gentlemen alert and gallant
- 1962, Pearl S. Buck, A Bridge for Passing, page 18:
[…] lest saints yield to the devil within us all, or whether it was the missionary women in their long skirts and sleeves and high collars who knew they could never compete with the smooth brown bodies wearing nothing except a gay bit of cloth or […]
Noun: homosexuals
- 1978, Kenneth Henry, Social problems: institutional and interpersonal perspectives, page 214:
A property owner still has considerable autonomy in choice of tenants. One lesbian mother discussed her own situation which was substantially repeated, with some variations, by other gays.
- 2010, Tracy Baim, Obama and the Gays: A Political Marriage →ISBN, page 238:
Rock star Melissa Etheridge asked if this meant she and other gays did not have to pay their California taxes.
- 2014, Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy, Madeline D. Davis, Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold →ISBN:
For long periods of time she did not go to the bars, particularly when her feminine lovers were hesitant about associating publicly with other gays. She was strongly against lesbians drawing attention to themselves.
Noun: those who are gay (happy)
- 1919, Life, volume 74, issue 1, page 22:
The glooms are always at war with the gays. The glooms are jealous of anything that is gay. To them, gaiety is not only hideous, but it must be destroyed. The gays do not feel this way about the glooms. The reason why is because the sum total ...
Adjective: colorful
- 1822, Richard Henry Dana, The Idle Man, page 103:
“And there's a bright red berry that looks gay enough amongst it.—But peace,” said he, “for here's the dwelling of the dying man.”
- 1880, McBride's Magazine, page 166:
But to-day the Welsh Ride looks gay enough, for it is dotted with little knots of horsemen in black or red coats using it as a short cut from Alclershot and Sandhurst.
- 1889, Daniel Wise, Boy Travelers in Arabia, page 24:
That fellow looks gay enough to be a performer in Barnum's greatest show on earth! How grandly he struts in his red morocco boots! I guess he thinks himself equal to a pasha of ever so many tails.
- 1942, Harper's Bazaar:
What looks gay enough in a restaurant and not too silly on the midnight train home? Since you're saving tires and using the train more than ever, the perfect answer for that evening at a restaurant or a theatre is a short evening suit.
Adjective: LGBT / queer / non-heternormative
- This is the sense that's hard to find unambiguous citations of, cf. talk.
- Use subsequently defined in the text:
- 2007, Stephan Cohen, The Gay Liberation Youth Movement in New York: ‘An Army of Lovers Cannot Fail’ (→ISBN), quoting Sylvia Rivera:
'If you want Gay Power, then you're going to have to fight for it. And you're going to have to fight until you win.' For Rivera, 'gay' meant non-heteronormative (or 'queer' in today's lexicon), crossing sexual and gender boundaries to include lesbians, gay men, and transvestites, as well as the street youth who had participated in Stonewall.
- 2011, Charlie T. McCormick, Kim Kennedy White, Folklore: An Encyclopedia of Beliefs, Customs, Tales, Music, and Art, ABC-CLIO (→ISBN), page 607:
- Gay (LGBTQ) Studies and Queer Theory
The study of orientation- and gender-variant people (popularly represented by gay and the acronym LGBTQ: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Queer), and a theoretical approach (queer theory) that considers their communities on their own terms.
- 2014, Rachel Kranz, Tim Cusick, Gay Rights (→ISBN), page 3:
For convenience, this volume uses gay, gay rights, and gay people as umbrella terms to include gay men, lesbians, and bisexuals. In some cases transgender people are also included in the term, although many transgender people do not consider themselves gay or lesbian, and at some points in gay history, transgender rights were considered part of the gay rights movement.
- 2018, Boba Samuels, Jordana Garbati, Mastering Academic Writing, SAGE (→ISBN)
Eva: I'm looking at the perceptions of change room spaces by the gay – LGBTI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex) – community.
Cory: Hmm. You mean inclusion of the LGBTI community in change rooms?
Eva: Yes. That's right.
- Including bisexuals:
- 2014, Lacey Sloan, Nora Gustavsson, Violence and Social Injustice Against Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual People (→ISBN), page 116:
Latina lesbians, Latino gays and bisexuals may experience a triple stigma and oppression when they are not fully accepted in the gay community because of their ethnicity[.]
- Other:
- 2014, Wallace Swan, Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Civil Rights: A Public Policy Agenda for Uniting a Divided America, CRC Press (→ISBN), page 90:
Early tensions in the LGBT community involved whether the movement should be mainstream and work for political and social inclusion, or whether gay power and gay pride should be aligned with counterculture movements of the time[.]
- Other, arguable:
- 2006, Krista Scott-Dixon, Trans/forming Feminisms: Trans/feminist Voices Speak Out, Canadian Scholars’ Press (→ISBN), page 110:
Our rights have long been put on a back burner because adding trans rights to gay and lesbian rights might slow down the gay rights movement. People forget that the “official” beginning of the gay rights movement, Stonewall, was a transgender uprising; that the first legal same-sex marriages were between a genetic woman and a trans woman; and that trans people are regularly beaten, […]
- 2015, Cynthia Lucia, Roy Grundmann, Art Simon, American Film History: Selected Readings, 1960 to the Present, John Wiley & Sons (→ISBN), page 340:
To a large degree this was a response to the cultural changes that had been wrought by both the mainstream LGBT gay rights organizations as well as groups such as ACT UP and Queer Nation.
Unsorted or unclear which specific sense is meant
- 1851, The Athenaeum, page 704:
So then an alarum spring / Should go off gay. / You know in my beginning it were curst / To be thought prosy, / How could you listen, if at the first burst / I made you dozy.
- 1923, Francis Fisher Browne, Scofield Thayer, Waldo Ralph Browne, The Dial, page 267:
He would spend an evening with Oxford, Bolingbroke, Pope, and Swift and then go off gay and incontinent to this or that little midnight drab.
Dialectal senses (partly from the EDD)
adjective: in good health or spirits; convalescent
- 1806, Belle Assemblée, page 49:
- {{quote|en|Youths! tho' yet no losses grieve you,
Gay in health and manly grace,
Let not cloudless skies deceive you,
Summer gives to autumn place.
adjective: fine, flourishing, in good order, excellent
- 1860, Gillett, Sng. Sol., v. 11:
- His hid is most gay gold.
- 1891, Reports Provinc.:
"'Tis a pretty gay road." It is com. to say of a poor crop, "tidn a very gay piece o' whate,"
adjective: of hay, wheet, grass: (too) fresh/green, or damp
- 1898, Raymond. Men o' Mendip, x:
I be a-most afeared we've a-carr'd it a bit too gay.
adjective (and adverb): fast, speedy; quick (and spirited?)
- 1873, Gwordie Greenup, Yance a Year, 25:
I went a gay shack, / For it started to rain.
- 1888, Charles St. John, The Wild Sports and Natural History of the Scottish Highlands, page 256:
I soon had cleaned my quarry and stowed him as safely as I could, and then turned down the glen at a gay pace. I found Donald with Bran reposing at Malcolm's shealing; and for all reproaches on his misconduct, I was satisfied with sending him to bring home the “muckle hart of Benmore,” a duty which he performed before night-fall.
- 1911, The Planter and Sugar Manufacturer, page 307:
With some difficulty the yoke was adjusted, and the oxen, not accustomed to such a light weight behind them, started on at a gay pace, which soon lifted my friend of his feet and left him waving about ...
- 1913, The Christian Advocate, page 1558:
Our grand Plymouth Rock rooster, who had been known to attack a presiding elder, chased one who had breakfasted well, at a gay pace along the turnpike, to his evident chagrin and disgust. But run he did.
- 2016, Laura Jean Libbey, Mischievous Maid Faynie, Library of Alexandria (→ISBN):
" […] there is no one more competent to make it fly at a gay pace than myself. A prince of the royal blood couldn't go at a faster pace than I have been going during these last three weeks! Ha, ha, ha!" In a moment he was kneeling before the safe.
- 2019, Lawrence Lariar, He Died Laughing, Open Road Media (→ISBN):
We shot along Sunset Boulevard at a gay pace, and squealed a turn down Vine Street with never a jitterbug pedestrian to make the driving interesting.
- 1918, Hunter-trader-trapper, page 36:
We launched our canoe and were off at a gay clip for Hackettstown, where Mart had a married sister, and we were figuring on big eats.
- 1973, Happy Traum, Flat Pick Country Guitar, Oak Publications (→ISBN):
Worried Man Blues is another well-known Carter Family song that was picked up by the folk revival via Woody, Pete, et al. Although it is usually sung at a gay clip, the story and the phrasing lead me to believe it was once a real blues-type song ...
- 1979, M. A. Stoneridge, A Dog of Your Own, Doubleday Books (→ISBN):
A short-legged Dachshund or Scottish Terrier can trot at a gay clip as his owner merely strolls along at his side, while a Pointer or Irish Setter at the same pace would hardly be stretching his legs.
(Scotland, Northern England) considerable, great, large in number or size; good
- 1832, George Pearson, Evenings by Eden-side: Or, Essays and Poems, page 67:
As his reply was rather characteristic, I will give it : Many of them come a gay bit off.
- 1866, Gilpin Sngs., 533:
An' frae Carel a canny gay few.
- 1872, William Cullen Bryant, A Library of Poetry and Song, page 106:
Thou 's wantin' a sweetheart? Thou 's had a gay few! An' thou 's cheatit them, […]
- 1876 (edition; original 1871), Richardson, Talk 1:
A gay deal different to what I is noo.
- 1881, Dixon, Craven Dales:
There were a gay bit of lace on it.
- 1881, Edwin Waugh, Tufts of Heather, I. 106:
T'country-side was rid on him for a gay while.
- 1895, Sir Hall Caine, The Shadow of a Crime: A Cumbrian Romance, page 131:
"He has a gay bit of gumption in him, has Ray. It'll be no kitten play to catch hold on him, and they know that they do." The emphasis was accompanied by a lowered tone, and a sidelong motion of the head towards a doorway […]
- 1903, Robert Smith Surtees, Handley Cross, New York : D. Appleton, page 431:
"It's a gay bit off, though." "Trot on!" retorted Mr. Jorrocks anxiously, spurring Arterxerxes vehemently, an insult that the animal resented by a duck of his head and a hoist of his heels. Bump, bump, trot, trot, squash, splash, swosh, they went ...
Adverb-ish
2009 July 28, Zack Parsons, Your Next-Door Neighbor Is a Dragon:, Kensington Publishing Corp., →ISBN:Reverend Ian Sanderson gay-divorced us all and we gay-hated it! Booo! Thank goodness Philosopher Rhimes was around to lead us out of Plato's Gay Cave. […]
2020 May 29, Gregory Ashe, Wayward, Hodgkin and Blount:“Yeah,” Norman said, “but your gay ass has never been gay divorced.” “We're not even married yet.” “You call us when he kicks you to the curb for real. First drink's always on your buddies.” […]
Portuguese citations of gay
2003, Soraya Bittencourt, Uma vida de sucesso: como uma homossexual brasileira se deu bem na Microsoft, Edições GLS, →ISBN, page 102:E por uns minutinhos eu achei que o meu gaydar, o radar que a gente sempre acha que tem e nos ajuda a localizar gente e lugares gays pelo mundo afora, estava falhando.- (please add an English translation of this quotation)
- 1835, John Donald Carrick, The Laird of Logan, page 132:
"We've come, doctor, to ask a gaye queer question; but I hope ye'll no tak it amiss."- (please add an English translation of this quotation)