7. Mainstream Use of “Gay” to Mean Homosexual

It’s not quite clear when “gay” began to mean more than just happy. As early as the 18th century, the word was used to describe a person or place of looser-than-the-standard morals. “Gay Paree” and “gay divorcee” were common phrases of the time, which described the uninhibited fun had in the City of Lights and by recently unentangled folks. By the 1800s, a “gay house” had become a synonym for a brothel. In the early 1920s, both Gertrude Stein and Noel Coward had used the word “gay” to imply a homosexual in their prose, but the references were pretty much lost on anyone outside of the literary intelligentsia of that time. Mainstream America was formally introduced to the term in 1938, courtesy of the film Bringing up Baby. In one scene, Cary Grant is virtually being held hostage by Katharine Hepburn, who has sent all of his clothes to the cleaners. She provides him with one of her frilly dressing gown to wear, and when he later answers a knock at the door in that garb, he explains to the startled visitor, “I just went gay all of a sudden!”