Gays being gay about gay rather than being gay

With Christmas coming, well, according to the shops and the adverts on TV, here’s the first two verses of a Christmas carol for you. Sing along now:

Deck the halls with boughs of holly,

Fa la la la la, la la la la.

T’is the season to be jolly,

Fa la la la la, la la la la.

Don we now our gay apparel,

Fa la la, la la la, la la la.

Troll the ancient Yule tide carol,

Fa la la la la, la la la la.

There’s two words in the second verse that interest me. ‘Gay‘ and ‘Troll‘. What I like about these words is that in my lifetime I have seen the meaning and use of these words change, morph if you like, to mean something different. Neither word means what it once did.

Say the word ‘troll‘ to almost anybody under 40 and they will say it is the name given to somebody on the internet writing things designed to upset people, usually quite cruelly. In this context it derives from an older definition of ‘trolling‘, which is a fishing term for trailing a baited line behind a slowly moving fishing boat.

‘Troll‘ in more modern parlance can also refer to searching for somebody, usually searching for a ‘victim’ for a mugging is called ‘trolling‘. I guess this also comes from the fishing context. Ask anybody under 20 in any major city, and this is what they assume you mean when you say ‘trolling‘.

A ‘troll‘ is also mystical beastie that every young male into role play games and Tolkienesque fantasy will know.

However, a couple of hundred years ago, ‘troll‘ meant to sing heartily. And gaily.

Gaily being from gaiety and leading to gay.

When the carol was written, a person who was ‘gay‘ was happy, carefree and merry, a pleasure seeker, usually a socialite, and so accordingly wore brightly coloured clothes and a noticeable hat.

Ask anybody over 60 what the meaning of ‘gay‘ is, and their first explanation will be the above.

However, the word ‘gay‘ was kidnapped by the homosexual community to describe themselves. I’m guessing it fitted for the more flamboyant, dare I call them ‘camp’ (without looking at the changed usage of the word ‘camp’), who truly were also exactly as defined in gaiety. To have ‘gaiety’ was indicative of homosexuality, and so the logical evolution of the word ‘gay‘ to describe a generic homosexual was perfectly fine in every way.

Those who objected to the changed meaning of the word were told they were square and out of touch, maybe even homophobic.  They should get with it.  Extensive berating, bullying and moaning, went on against any who dared protest and defend the ancient meaning of the word. ‘Gay‘ quite universally meant homosexual, it was the new unofficial law.

I like language, especially the English language. One of the brilliant aspects of English is that inanimate objects aren’t assigned a gender. A pen is not male. It is not female. It’s just an ‘it’. Take that, you stupid and annoying languages like French, who think pens are male. Ha ha ha, stupid French people.

The second brilliance that English has is that it constantly evolves with the times. Words redefine themselves. New words arrive as new things arrive. I mean, nobody was ‘twerking’ until recently. Now it’s an acceptable word to describe a somewhat acceptable dance move.

The word ‘gay‘ has now changed its meaning.

Just as those who defined ‘gay‘ as being about flamboyance resisted the move for the word to mean homosexual, it seems the ‘gay‘ community don’t like the new definition of ‘gay‘.

Ask anybody under the age of 20 and they will tell you that ‘gay‘ means daft, stupid, annoying, unwanted, weird, unacceptable, rubbish. The most common use of ‘gay‘ is with the word ‘that’s‘, as in “That’s so gay“. A typical context might be, “My mum said I can’t come out till the weekend.” “OMG, that’s so gay.”

There isn’t another word available as a direct translation of the modern meaning of ‘gay‘, hence why I used seven to get as close to it as I could.

It’s a unique word. Almost as unique as ‘innit‘. ‘Innit‘ is my favourite new word of all time, but hey, more about ‘innit‘ another time.

So, back to ‘gay‘.

It’s sad that gays are being so gay about the word gay instead of being happy and gay about it, innit.