The Gay Language: Polari makes comeback, but not really.

Gay slang was heavily used in the 1960s around the time that prosecution was causing us to riot and fight back for equal civil rights. It allowed the GLBT community to communicate in a heterosexual environment without fear of being outed, hated, or attacked as being homosexual.

In the UK, a gay language known as Polari sprang up, but not much has been written about the subject. As scholars delve more into GLBT history, activism, and effects, interest has piqued. Apparently, it’s been hard to track down exact origins or dictionaries of words due to it’s oral nature. (ha.. bad sexual pun, sorry).

However, some small efforts have been made. Some Polari words actually made their way into mainstream language, and some are words we still use today. Here are some common examples:

bod – body (simple, right?)
butch – masculine, masculine lesbian (this has become slightly pejorative)
dish – an attractive male, or buttocks (a term chauvinists use for women now)
drag – clothes, esp. women’s clothes
fruit – a queen, now also pejorative unless you’re gay

It’s not too surprising that a gay slang developed in the UK. British people mostly have an almost unintelligible slang to Americans anyway. Hilariously enough, in a dictionary of British slang I found the following entry:

gannet Noun. A greedy person.

Sound familiar?