lets all be gay.........

The word "gay" arrived in English during the 12th century from Old French gai, akin to Old High German gāhi quick, sudden.For most of its life in English, the word's primary meaning was "joyful", "carefree", "bright and showy".

The word had started to acquire associations of immorality by 1637 and was used in the late 17th century with the meaning "addicted to pleasures and dissipations."

This was by extension from the primary meaning of "carefree": implying "uninhibited by moral constraints." A gay woman was a prostitute, a gay man a womanizer and a gay house a brothel.

<< Illustration of Victorian prostitutes; and of Victorian meaning of word "gay" from Punch magazine, 1857.

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