Should anyone ever read those utterings that I call poems <http://majrpoems.com> they might have noticed that I consistently use the adjective gay, or its adverbial cousin gaily. This is not an accident; it is a purposed attempt to remind the reader that gay, as an adjective, has been in the English language since the 12th century; it comes from the French word gai, and means joyful, happy, bright, light-hearted, and so on. In another sense it was used in the 19^th century as meaning licentious or immoral. But during the 1960s, it was adopted by the community of homosexual males as a euphemism, or weasel-word, to describe their behavioral predilection. Now this “new” meaning has become so dominant that it is impossible to use the word gay without the reader/listener jumping to the immediate conclusion that one is referring to homosexuality. Here is what the on line Free Dictionary <www.thefreedictionary.com> has to say about the usage of gay:

“By far the most common and up-to-date use of the word gay is in reference to being homosexual. Other senses of the word have become uncommon and dated.”

“Uncommon and dated”? Bah! Humbug!

Here we have one of the few, very expressive, three-letter, one syllable words in the English language, which in my early years meant something to delight in, on a par with joy; only to find that it has been purloined. I certainly understand why homosexuals would want to stop being called the names that they have been called-I resist listing them-all of which have ugly, derogatory connotations. But why, o why, would they adopt gay of all words to describe their sexual preference; there must be hundreds that they could have picked that would upset nobody (not even I).

How about posh? Surely nobody uses this stupid word these days? Posh means smart, fashionable, upper-class, etc., it connotes a moneyed-class and even sounds snobbish; it deserves to be cast into the word wilderness. If there were one or two posh-users still around in the 1960s when gay was so brutally filched, were the word posh adopted to describe homosexuality, it would have discouraged them from ever using it, and the word would happily cease to exist in English usage, except within the homosexual connotation. It would disappear from proper usage, just as gay has disappeared, and that would not exercise me one jot or tittle. It has been said that posh is an acronym and not a real word, anyway, meaning Port Out Starboard Home, referring to the cooler (and thus more expensive) region of ships steaming from England to India in the mid-1800s, a no longer fashionable activity.

Of course, had the homosexual folk adopted posh then Mrs. Adams’ classy daughter Victoria would not have been given the soubriquet Posh Spice and then, who knows, might not have been attractive to David Beckham and thus, according to my brand of logical determinism, the world would not have had to deal with their kids’ androgynous names, viz., Harper, Brooklyn, Cruz, or Romeo, although I would put a little money on Romeo being a boy.

Talking about the names of celebrity footballers’ offspring, I see that the Rooney’s now have two sons whom they have named Klay and Kai; whatever happened to Joe and Fred, for goodness sake? Both Beckham and Rooney play, or have played, football for Manchester United and maybe that is where the craze for weird names comes from; you can expect most anything from that gang! Pity the poor kids though, when their school mates are let loose on them; no amount of money and status of the parents can alleviate the psychological scarring by the taunts of heartless children against a perceived flaw in a kid. Of course there is always home-schooling, but at some point in life the kids have to face their peers and run the gauntlet.

Where was I? Oh yes, going on about gay and posh. Well, I think that perhaps I have said enough about this subject; I have been told that sometimes I tend to go on a bit too long. Nevertheless I intend to continue my one-man campaign to keep the true meaning of the gay word in the world of the blog (if only mine), and I shall continue to refrain from the use of weasel-words when referring to homosexuals.

By way of disclosure: in general, I have nothing against homosexuality; I tend to be of the live and let live persuasion, but as I think I have indicated above, I am most unhappy about their distortion of one of the most evocative words in the English language.