gay – English verb conjugation

Nominal Forms

Infinitive: to gay
Participle: gayed
Gerund: gaying

Cognates

-

Indicative

Subjunctive

Conditional

Imperative

you	gay
we	Let's gay
you	gay

Indicative

Conditional

Synonyms & Antonyms

Additional Information

Phrasal Verbs

Etymology

1. 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.
2. cognates and sense derivation
3. Cognate with Dutch gauw (“fast, quickly”), Westphalian Low German gau, gai (“fast, quick”), German jäh (“abrupt, sudden”).
4. Anatoly Liberman, following Frank Chance and Harri Meier, believes Old French gai was instead a native development from Latin vagus (“wandering, inconstant, flighty”), with *[w] > [g] as in French gaine.
5. The sense of homosexual (first recorded no later than 1937 by Cary Grant in the film Bringing Up Baby, and possibly earlier in 1922 in the poem "Miss Furr and Miss Skeene" by Gertrude Stein) was shortened from earlier gay boy ("young male prostitute") and gay cat ("homosexual boy") in underworld and prison slang, itself first attested about 1935, but used earlier for a young tramp or hobo attached to an older one.
6. Pejorative usage is due to hostility towards homosexuality.
7. The sense of ‘upright’, used in reference to a dog’s tail, probably derives from the ‘happy’ sense of the word.

Sample Sentences