Added 9 October 2026
gay
/ɡeɪ/ symbol
In Latin: hilaris Wiktionary
symbol Definition from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA). Pronunciation from Wiktionary, via Kaikki.org. More about gay at Wordnik → Where our words come from →
adjective
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Homosexual: Only possessing sexual and/or romantic attraction towards people one perceives to be the same sex or gender as oneself. .mw-parser-output .defdate{font-size:smaller}
Cliff is gay, but his twin brother is straight.
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Only possessing sexual and/or romantic attraction towards people one perceives to be the same sex or gender as oneself. .mw-parser-output .defdate{font-size:smaller}
Cliff is gay, but his twin brother is straight.
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Of a man, only romantically and/or sexually attracted to other men.
gay and lesbian people
noun
- A homosexual, especially a male homosexual.
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Gayness: the quality of being gay.
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.
- Something which is bright or colorful, such as a picture or a flower.
verb
- To make happy or cheerful.
- To cause (something, e.g. AIDS) to be associated with homosexual people.
Origin
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 *ǵʰeh₁- (“to leave”), 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”).
From Wiktionary, via Kaikki.org (CC BY-SA)