gay
Forms
- Comparative
- gayer
- Superlative
- gayest
- Plural
- gays
- present (v1)
- gay
- past (v2)
- gayed
- past participle (v3)
- gayed
- present participle
- gaying
- 3rd person singular
- gays
Definitions
1.Homosexual:
- Cliff is gay, but his twin brother is straight.
- Her adoptive mother fainted when Gail told her she was gay.
- Again I was to masturbate into a cup and again the majority of the porn was gay.
2.Flamboyant or effeminate in behavior.(slang)
3.Used to express dislike: lame, uncool, stupid, burdensome, contemptible, generally bad.(slang)
- This game is gay; let’s play a different one.
4.Upright or curved over the back.
- While the dog in concentrating at a given task, the tail is carried low and used for balance. In excitement it may rise level with the back. A “gay” tail is a fault.
1.A homosexual, especially a male homosexual.
- Older gays and lesbians often relegate themselves to separate and unequal meeting places.
- "Same-sex dancing, as we call it, is quite legal," a gay named Lew Todd, who was one of the spokesmen, spoke up.
- Yet that does not mean that the issues, concerns and attitudes of gays and lesbians in the workplace are not important.
2.Gayness: the quality of being gay.(informal)
- Anti-gay persecution holds that you can pray the gay out of a person, or scare it out of them, or cajole it out of them.
1.To cause (something, e.g. AIDS) to be associated with homosexual people.
1.Considerably, very.
- When a fellah com' in 'at was gay free wid spendin.
- She'll mak naw moor mischeef neets, she's gay quiet now!
- And, tho' his guts ware lank and toom, / They're twice as big's this gay big room.
Frequency
Overall
Common· #1638
By learning goal
- Everyday conversation
- Uncommon
- General reading & writing
- Common
- Academic
- Rare
- Literature
- Rare
Related words
Synonyms
Etymology
From Middle English gay, from Old French gai (“joyful, laughing, merry”), usually thought to be a borrowing of Old Occitan gai (“impetuous, lively”), from Gothic *𐌲𐌰𐌷𐌴𐌹𐍃 (*gaheis, “impetuous”), merging with earlier Old French jai ("merry"; see jay), from Frankish *gāhi; both from Proto-Germanic *ganhuz, *ganhwaz (“sudden”). This is possibly derived from Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰengʰ- (“to stride, step”), from *ǵʰeh₁- (“to leave”), but Kroonen rejects this derivation and treats the Germanic word as having no known etymology. cognates and sense derivation