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English
Alternative forms
Etymology
From poof + -er.
Pronunciation
Noun
poofter (plural poofters)
- (UK, Australia, New Zealand, Commonwealth, Ireland, derogatory, slang, vulgar) A male homosexual, especially an effeminate one.
- Synonym: faggot
1908 November 20, Sydney Montgomery, “Paranoia with some Cases”, in Australasian Medical Gazette, volume 27, number 11, Australasian Medical Association, →ISSN, →OCLC, pages 598–602:Another man told me he was a "poofter," but I never was able to get a definition of this word from him.
1943, John Bostock, Evan Jones, The nervous soldier: a handbook for the prevention, detection and treatment of nervous invalidity in war, page 11:Hallucinations, again, are the expression of repressed systems of ideas and desires; for example a man who has strong repressed homo-sexual tendencies may hear voices calling him a poofter.
1964, Ian Fleming, You Only Live Twice, page 36:"You pommy poofter. You give me any more of that liberal crap and I'll have your balls for a bow tie." Bond said mildly, "What's a poofter?" "What you'd call a pansy. No," Dikko Henderson got to his feet and fired a string of what sounded like lucid Japanese at the man behind the bar, […] .
2007, John Mendoza, Mad Blue Smoke, Melbourne, Australia: Pasini Press, page 113:I just ignored them because I didn't think what I did made me a poofter. Me and Dwayne were best friends, and it was only because there were no girls around, and I liked it. My father taught me that homosexuality was unnatural, and that poofters were men who couldn't form relationships with women because they were horrifying, repulsive queers.
- (UK, Australia, New Zealand, Commonwealth, Ireland, derogatory, slang) A pansy, an effeminate man.
Usage notes
Poofter is nowadays one of the most pejorative words in Australian English, perhaps because of its use in the phrase poofter-bashing, which arose during the 1960s and 1970s during organised hate crimes against homosexuals across Australia and particularly in the Sydney district of King's Cross, a major centre of Sydney's gay social life. Beyond its use as an anti-homosexual slur, it is also often aimed at males who do not conform to normative ideals of masculinity in other ways, particularly in the fields of art or academia.
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