Re: Linux advocacy

On Fri, 4 Oct 2024 20:54:25 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

On 4 Oct 2024 20:26:54 GMT, rbowman wrote:
 

When his mother saw them she exclaimed 'Oh, what gay laces!'. We
cringed ...

 
Only because you saw it as somehow embarrassing.

Cringe was the wrong word choice but I couldn't think of a better. This
was around 1970 and 'gay' was hardly as widely used as it became. His
mother was an older woman from Maine which wasn't exactly on the front
lines of breaking culture and using 'gay' for 'colorful' was sort of
archaic. It was the juxtaposition of a somewhat uncommon usage with a term
that was starting to acquire a completely different meaning.

The use of 'queer' is more understandable given its original usage. It has
also been around for longer. I don't know when the new meaning was
acquired but definitely by the '50s. Burrough's follow up to 'Junkie' was
'Queer' in '51. It wasn't published at the time. I don't know when it
became a self-reference either. The '80s?

'Faggot' puzzles me and the expert etymologists apparently. I really got
confused when I read Kipling's 'Stalky & Co'. Much later I read C.S.
Lewis' 'Surprised by Joy' where he hinted even more strongly that there
was a bit of faggotry in British 'public schools', another confusing term
for Americans. Then there are cigarettes.