Definition of GAY

gay

Plural: gays

Noun

  • A homosexual person.
  • someone who practices homosexuality; having a sexual attraction to persons of the same sex
  • A homosexual, especially a male homosexual.
  • Gayness: the quality of being gay.
  • Something which is bright or colorful, such as a picture or a flower.
  • An ornament, a knick-knack.
  • The letter —, which stands for the sound /ɡ/, in Pitman shorthand.

Adjective Satellite

  • bright and pleasant; promoting a feeling of cheer
    • "a gay sunny room"
  • full of or showing high-spirited merriment; ; - Wordsworth
    • "when hearts were young and gay"
    • "a poet could not but be gay, in such a jocund company"
  • given to social pleasures often including dissipation
    • "led a gay Bohemian life"
    • "a gay old rogue with an eye for the ladies"
  • brightly colored and showy
    • "a dress a bit too gay for her years"
    • "birds with gay plumage"
  • offering fun and gaiety
    • "gay and exciting night life"
  • homosexual or arousing homosexual desires

Adj

  • Homosexual:
  • Possessing sexual and/or romantic attraction towards people one perceives to be the same sex or gender as oneself.
  • Homosexual:
  • Describing a homosexual man.
  • Homosexual:
  • Tending to partner or mate with other individuals of the same sex.
  • Homosexual:
  • Between two or more persons perceived to be of the same sex or gender as each other.
  • Homosexual:
  • Not heterosexual, or not cisgender: homosexual, bisexual, asexual, transgender, etc.
  • Homosexual:
  • Intended for gay people, especially gay men.
  • Homosexual:
  • Homosexually in love with someone.
  • Homosexual:
  • Infatuated with something, aligning with homosexual stereotypes.
  • Homosexual:
  • In accordance with stereotypes of homosexual people:
  • Being in accordance with stereotypes of gay people, especially gay men.
  • Homosexual:
  • In accordance with stereotypes of homosexual people:
  • Exhibiting appearance or behavior that accords with stereotypes of gay people, especially gay men.
  • Effeminate or flamboyant in behavior.
  • Used to express dislike: lame, uncool, stupid, burdensome, contemptible, generally bad.
  • Happy, joyful, and lively.
  • Quick, fast.
  • Festive, bright, or colourful.
  • Sexually promiscuous (of any gender), (sometimes particularly) engaged in prostitution.
  • Upright or curved over the back.
  • Considerable, great, large in number, size, or degree. In this sense, also in the variant gey.

Verb

  • To make happy or cheerful.
  • To cause (something, e.g. AIDS) to be associated with homosexual people.

Adv

  • Considerably, very.

Adjective

  • Merry, cheerful, or brightly colored.

Examples

  • Although the number of gay weddings has increased significantly, many gay and lesbian couples — like many straight couples — are not interested in getting married.
  • 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.
  • Cliff is gay, but his twin brother is straight.
  • gay and lesbian people
  • gay marriage
  • gay sex
  • Placing GAY on a triple-letter was a quick, effective play.
  • She professes an undying love for gay bars and gay movies, and even admits to having watched gay porn.
  • The Gay Science
  • The tiles shimmered with a GAY array of colors, tempting me to make a bold move.
  • This game is gay; let’s play a different one.

Origin / 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 *ǵʰēy- (“to go”), but Kroonen rejects this derivation and treats the Germanic word as having no known etymology.
cognates and sense derivation
Cognate with Dutch gauw (“fast, quickly”), Westphalian Low German gau, gai (“fast, quick”), German jäh (“abrupt, sudden”).
Anatoly Liberman, following Frank Chance and Harri Meier, believes Old French gai was instead a native development from Latin vagus (“wandering, inconstant, flighty”), with *[w] > [g] as in French gaine.
The sense of homosexual (first recorded no later than 1937 by Cary Grant in the film Bringing Up Baby, and possibly earlier in 1922 in the poem "Miss Furr and Miss Skeene" by Gertrude Stein) was shortened from earlier gay cat ("homosexual boy") in underworld and prison slang, itself first attested about 1935, but used earlier for a young tramp or hobo attached to an older one.
Pejorative usage is probably due to hostility towards homosexuality.
The sense of ‘upright’, used in reference to a dog’s tail, probably derives from the ‘happy’ sense of the word.

Synonyms

brave, braw, cheery, festal, festive, homo, homophile, homosexual, jocund, jolly, jovial, merry, mirthful, queer, sunny, ghey, homosexual person and Thesaurus:male homosexual

Scrabble Score: 7

gay: valid Scrabble (US) TWL Word
gay: valid Scrabble Word in Merriam-Webster MW Dictionary
gay: valid Scrabble Word in International Collins CSW Dictionary

Words With Friends Score: 7

gay: valid Words With Friends Word