Where did the word gay come from? Origin and development in the Czech language

Gay (pronounced: gej) is a word that is commonly used in Czech, but it definitely does not originate from it. So where did it come from?

You might think that the word gay comes from English, and you wouldn't be wrong. But in this language, it doesn't just refer to masculine people sexually oriented towards other masculine people. The term gay can also be translated as "cheerful" or "joyful", as we can read in many dictionaries .

But how did this word come about in English?

According to Gayly.com , it came from the 12th century Old French gai , which also meant something cheerful or carefree. However, the connection with sex and sexual orientation did not appear in English until the 17th century, probably because it was used to describe people of "light manners." The word gay first appeared in the Oxford English Dictionary in a sexual sense in 1951.

And when did the word gay first appear in Czech?

We cannot say for sure, but the first occurrence of the word gay in the Czech Language Corpus database can be found in Lidové noviny from 1992. In issue 153, there is a report that the HIV virus is spreading in gay clubs, but at the same time the newspaper translates the phrase gay-related immune deficiency syndrome as syndrom nezpřízení vyhľadního súbory homóseksułů , not gayů . In another issue of the same year, however, the newspaper already uses the word gay as a noun, when reporting on the visit of German director Rosa von Prauheim to what was then Czechoslovakia.

So far, it doesn't seem like the word gay has a derogatory connotation in Czech, nor has any masculine person sexually oriented towards other masculine people visibly spoken out against it. On the other hand, languages ​​change, and it's possible that in a few centuries we'll need to use a different term to describe gay people.

Btw. Do you know where the word lesbian came from?