When did gay start to mean homosexual instead of happy?
The word gay was associated with flamboyance and style, hence “Don we now our gay apparel” (from the song “Deck the Halls”), “gay nineties” (1890s) and “gay Paris (Paree)” in the late 1800s. Oscar Wilde was the epitome of gay. After it became publicly known that Wilde was homosexual in 1895, the word began to have a sexual undertone. By the 1920s it was being used to describe homosexuals, mostly among homosexuals themselves or those without prejudice to homosexuals. In the 1960s, the word became more commonly used among the general population and by the 1970s was the term was widely used to refer to homosexual people.
