baths – bathhouses frequented by gay men for sexual encounters (US).baby gay – a young or recently out gay person (US).100-footer – an obviously gay or lesbian person (as if visible from 100 feet away) ( US).Other argots are spoken in southern Africa ( Gayle language and IsiNgqumo) and Indonesia ( Bahasa Binan). In the Philippines, many LGBT people speak with Swardspeak, or "gay lingo", which is a more extensive use of slang as a form of dialect or way of speaking. Conversations between gay men have been found to use more slang and fewer commonly known terms about sexual behavior than conversations between straight men. Conversely, words such as " banjee", while well-established in a subset of gay society, have never made the transition to popular use. Drag has been traced back by the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) to the late 19th Century. For example, the word drag was popularized by Hubert Selby Jr.
Many terms that originated as gay slang have become part of the popular lexicon. By 1999, this terminology had fallen out of use to the point of being greatly unrecognizable by members of the LGBT community at large. For example, in the 1960s and 1970s, the terms "cottage" (chiefly British) and "tearoom" (chiefly American) were used to denote public toilets used for sex. Terms used in one generation may pass out of usage in another. Specialized dictionaries that record LGBT slang have been found to revolve heavily around sexual matters. SCRUFF launched a gay-slang dictionary app in 2014, which includes commonly used slang in the United States from the gay community. The 1964 legislative report Homosexuality and Citizenship in Florida contains an extensive appendix documenting and defining the homosexual slang in the United States at that time. Although there are differences, contemporary British gay slang has adopted many Polari words. ĭuring the first seven decades of the 20th century, a specific form of Polari was developed by gay men and lesbians in urban centres of the United Kingdom within established LGBT communities. Since the advent of queer studies in universities, LGBT slang and argot has become a subject of academic research among linguistic anthropology scholars. 10 Terms describing asexuality or aromanticityīecause of sodomy laws and threat of prosecution due to the criminalization of homosexuality, LGBT slang has served as an argot or cant, a secret language and a way for the LGBT community to communicate with each other publicly without revealing their sexual orientation to others.9 Terms describing cisgender or heterosexual people.8 Terms related to transgender and non-binary people.7 Terms describing transgender and non-binary people.6 Terms describing androgynous or intersex people.5 Terms describing bisexuals or pansexuals.