caskur™
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« on: February 27, 2009, 10:56:55 am » |
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I know the word "****" means kindling....how that was it translated to todays American homosexuals is anyone's guess....
but it also came to me today, that "fags" which is what we call cigarrettes in Oz and also the poms call them "fags" would actually fit the discription of kindling, wouldn't it? so now it has got me to googling again and this is what I just turned up.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faggot_(slang) **** (slang)
**** or fag, in modern North American and Australian English is a word, and always[citation needed] a highly pejorative term, for a gay or effeminate man. Its use has spread to varying extents elsewhere in the English-speaking world.
The terms are used less in this sense in British English, where "****" traditionally means a bundle of sticks and faggots are a kind of meatball, while "fag" is common slang for a cigarette or for hard work; in some public schools, fagging was the name given to the practice where a younger boy (a "fag") acted as an unpaid servant for an older boy.http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2112/how-did-****-get-to-mean-male-homosexual The term **** or fagot, meaning bundle of sticks, shows up around 1300 in English. It almost certainly came from Old French, possibly going back to Greek phakelos. Since those bundles of sticks were mainly used for fires, it's not surprising that the term came to mean burning sticks. Then there was that nasty business in medieval times where heretics were burned at the stake. Some later cites indicate heretics who repented and were spared a fiery death had to wear a picture of a **** on their sleeve to show what might have been their fate. But no print evidence exists that homosexuals were referred to as faggots before the twentieth century, with the origin definitely in the U.S., not Britain. and this from the same site to answer my original question, "Why did the word end up meaning a homosexual in the USA? says this about it.....The first known published use of the word **** or fag to refer to a male homosexual appeared in 1914 in the U.S. It referred to a homosexual ball where the men were dressed in drag and called them "fagots (sissies)." Ernest Hemingway, in The Sun Also Rises (1926), included the line, "You're a hell of a good guy, and I'm fonder of you than anybody on earth. I couldn't tell you that in New York. It'd mean I was a ****." A 1921 cite says, "Androgynes [are] known as 'fairies,' 'fags,' or 'brownies.'" When I was little, my mother used to call my youngest sister at the time a "little ****" in an endearing way because she was the skinniest of us all.....she stopped using it when a neighbour told her it means something else....lol....I actually asked mum the other day about that and she cannot remember calling Jackie that....lol....but I remember it well.....I remember calling my cousin a "schnook" and getting into big trouble for that by her mother, my aunty.... _________________________________________ So the homosexual commumity have basically stolen 3 perfectly good words that were in proper use during the 1970's say,... and they are "queer," "gay" and "****."
I think it is about time to undo that damage, actually...
and there is another word people misuse and that is "rubber"....now kids call them "erasers" and if the term "rubber' is used at school, it is automatically laughed about.....instead of saying, Prophylactics or condoms...they say "rubbers"
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