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Possible Duplicate:
Gay (homosexual) and gay (happy)

I'm curious if there's a definitive moment where the word "gay" started being applied to homosexuals. Was it a specific coining, or just a general linguistic movement, and when.

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@Mehper C. Palavuzlar: Oftentimes it's not that easy to find an earlier dup, because our search facilities here mainly focus on the exact words in question titles, and there's little standardisation on that front. But typing "gay" into the search box puts that one top of the list. Sigh. – FumbleFingers Jan 3 '12 at 21:50

marked as duplicate by Mehper C. Palavuzlar, FumbleFingers, jwpat7, Robert Cartaino♦ Jan 3 '12 at 22:53

This question has been asked before and already has an answer. If those answers do not fully address your question, please ask a new question.

1 Answer

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Etymonline has an interesting entry on the etymology of the word with the sense homosexual:

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=gay&searchmode=none

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