Old Gay Slang

Fruit

Friend of Dorothy

Light in the loafers

Chicken

pillow biter

I was with a young gay couple yesterday and - talking about years ago - mentioned an old trick. That required translation.

Flamer

Pansy

He goes to my church.

nancy boy

Uranian

catamite

Ganymede

Toilet trader

Invert.

molly

Windward passage rider

sapphist

Light in the loafers.

Mary. Takes it in the coat. Sword swallower.

Cock gobbler. Homo. Dick licker. Butt munch. Rump rider. Pole vaulter. Fagala.

Friend of Dorothy

Please see prior posts before clicking on “Post” to avoid repetition. Thank you.

Fairy

Bum boy

Nancy boy

Poof

Butt slammer.

Twinkle toes.

r6, I use the term "trick" all the time, young folks don't know it?

Neile McQueen

I still say Mo’ OP and I’ve said it on here. I picked it up from some hipster friends of mine in college.

Cupcake. Limp wrist.

Rump ranger

Dick smoker

Scissor sister

Gary

Growing up, my dad called gay men gumps; he used the F word indiscriminately to anyone who pissed him off. I’ve only ever heard black men refer to us that way. Is it a black or generational thing.

One of those boys

Fruity Pierre

[quote][R6], I use the term "trick" all the time, young folks don't know it?

Well, 23-skidoo, [italic]I[/italic] do!

I use it with all the boys when we're bunnyhuggin', and Lindy-hoppin', and jitterbuggin'!

Sheldon's got the Chevy!

A hint of mint

Lavender as a stand-in term for the gay & lesbian demographic. I remember when the Kripalu yoga center catalog had Finding Lavender Love as a regular program. It was a singles mingle weekend for the ‘mos of both sexes. This was before bi and trans took their spaces in the lgbt contingent. .

Sissy. Fudge Packer(my fav).

Cock sucker. Swish. Rump Wrangler. Femme.

Of the Oscar Wilde type

Diesel dyke, fagmo, lipstick lesbian, fudgepacker, lesbetarian, one of the boys, lesbonic, cocksucker, Dutch boy, cornholer, clamdigger, DQ, drag king, dick licker, bulldagger, Nancy Boy, cunt hunter, poofter, aggressive, two spirit, trade, winkte, fagela, finocchio, heteroflexible, lezzie, geigh, bent, flit, butch, bugger, bean flicker, shirt lifter, bluff, sapphic sister,

Look up Polari for an entire new world. There might still be a Polari Dictionary.

Bum chum

Queer bait. Dick licker.

"Is he 'family'?".

Dropping hairpins

Giving men women's names ad nicknames is the big one from pre-Stonewall that died around the 90's. "Oh yeah, I was at the bar with Delia and Sue."

I get most of these but what does "takes in the coat" mean r15?

"Bent," which apparently is how the still much-used antonym "straight" came into being.

Saying French and Greek instead of top and bottom.

George Chauncey's epic early 20th century gay history book is a goldmine for this kind of info.

Sister-boy

She sips from the furry chalice.

Shirt-lifter

The love that dare not speak its name.

He likes to take a stroll down the dirty pathway.

Dinge queen, and may it die an eternal death.

foot tapper

Greek active/Greek passive

face like a bucket of boiled ass holes

Pansy!

Passive for bottom

Active for top

See Tarzan

Hear Jane

A big muscular guy who looks like a he- man but when he opens his mouth he sounds like Richard Simmons.

Did I miss it or am I the first to write "Hershey highway"?

Pitcher (top), Catcher (bottom)

Fancy Pants

Stud Muffin

She and Her when a gay man is referring to another gay man, not to be confused with gender pronouns that Trans insist everyone use like he/him, she/her They/Them or IT.

trade (rough trade)

chicken (chicken hawk)

hair burner

ribbon clerk

From the UK-

One of THEM.

Puddle jumper

Good with colours

Bum chum

Puftah

Vagitarian.

AC/DC

A devotee of Greek Love

A confirmed Bachelor

At the risk of warranting the wrath of R18, I knew immediately as a kid what our babysitter -- an older Irish woman -- meant when she referred to a friend of my younger brother as a "Mary." Whenever I say it myself, it's always with an Irish lilt to my voice!

South Africans used to be called bunny boys, I shit you not, man! 🐰

Homosexualist

r30, really? I use it and people don't get weird about it. I'm in my mid-fifties. old enough to have seen the film "trick" when it came out. and yeah, I can lindy-hop for the record, it made a big comeback in the 90s

FAG is still used a lot, for obvious reasons.

Frocio

Succhiacazzi

Pirata del culo

Figa di ragazzo

"Today's trade is tomorrow's competition."

Schwuchtel Warmer Bruder

Thank you to everyone who has posted. LOVE all these!

Shirt lifter

Tearoom Queen

"Dectectable".

Nancy boy

French / Greek

I remember seeing that in gay mags and other places in the 80's - to this day, I still don't know which is which. Too lazy to Google it. I assume top/bottom - but I'm not sure and don't know what France or Greece has to do with it. (Although ancient Greek homosexuality is obvious).

F.rench A.nd G.reek, ding-dong.

bats for the other team

Lambda

There is plenty of information about British Polari on the net. You can find a mini-documentary below.

Be nanti naff and let us cackle 'bout the feely omis you wanna arva, you bitaines!

Read this one in a gay erotic story ages ago and never forgot it: tubesteak cowboy.

She goes to Tuna Town

R70 In Jamaica they call em batty boys.

Q: "Is he 'funny'?"

A: "No, just British."

the racial ones: rice queen, bean queen, chocolate queen

The slang word "chicken" faded by the 1990s. "Twink" replaced it.

William Haines’ best buddy.

Chickenhawk needs an update. Twinkhawk doesn’t work.

"Rough Trade".

"Auntie" - an old gay man.

"Wrinkle Room" - a room (usually a barroom) full of old gay men.

muscle mary

Butt buddies

Uphill Gardener

Knob Jockey

Ryan Murphy's protégé

“Is he ‘so’?”.

Liza’s husband

Nudge-nudge, wink-wink

Conträrsexueller

Queer as a 3 dollar bill.

Gay as a soccer bat.

R105 I’ve heard of gay as a goose never a soccer bat tho.

The most sophisticated of queer dialects is Polari, a language which originated in London’s 19th-century music halls, before growing to near ubiquity in the 1930s theatre districts. Based on an earlier language called Parlyaree, a rudimentary dialect used by travellers in the Mediterranean from the 17th century onwards, Polari was a mix of Romani, Italian, Yiddish, backslang (think ‘riah’ instead of ‘hair’) and native Cockney rhyming slang.

Polari allowed gay men to talk privately while in the company of heterosexual people. It entered mainstream usage in the 1960s when it appeared in the BBC’s radio comedy show Round the Horne (where Hugh Paddick and Kenneth Williams played two out-of-work actors, Julian and Sandy). Polari, with its association with hyper-effeminate men, had reached the point of parody. After the decriminalisation of homosexuality in 1967, its everyday use fell into decline.

Polari is rarely used today, although many unknowingly still use it. Words such as ‘camp’, ‘naff’, ‘butch’, ‘ogle’ and many more were born out of the dialect.

While much research into gay slang and argot focuses on male culture, lesbian communities also have a long history of underground forms of communication. In 1920s Berlin there was a lesbian magazine called Die Freundin. In France, the constitution of 1791 meant that there was a relative lack of persecution against same-sex lovers, resulting in vibrant communities with their own slang and customs. Many queer women, including the writer Gertrude Stein, moved to Paris as it became a haven for same-sex lovers.

Montmartre in particular was home to a large lesbian community, with many residential blocks and restaurants becoming almost exclusively female, and cafes such as the Souris and the Rat Mort became established. A survey in 1836 suggested that more than half of all female prostitutes in Paris were lesbian. The 19th-century city produced some of the most delightfully obscure slang: ‘it smells of garlic here’, meant ‘there are lesbians about’ and ‘chestnut gatherer’ meant sodomite.