I HATE fags

[Male Bonding etc]

Thank you, Alex. I stand corrected.

 

[arliss]

interesting thread...at first glance i thought it was referring to something else....lol

 

[nudeyorker]

I met Brad Pitt and Catherine Deneuve standing ouside smoking!

 

[kalipygian]

Alex8 has taken up one point I made in a previous thread on this subject, but not the other.

The likeliest derivation for fag as a slang term for gay people is from the practice in English private residential grade schools (confusingly called 'public schools') of younger students being obliged to perform menial service for older boys, the boys were called 'fags' and the institution 'fagging'. An individual young boy was assigned to an individual older boy, like a personal servant.
At university, (Newton's time) a poor student was given a scholarship, but obliged to wait on paying students. Abuse was very common.
The longer term, 'faggot' (which I don't recall being called) could just as well have developed as an elaboration of the shorter term as the other way around.

I am not up on whether this practice has entirely died out, perhaps some Britts here might know.

'Fagged out' is worn out, 'fag end' the frayed end of a piece of fabric, 'faggot' means a chunk of something in various contexts, even a type of embroidery.

 

[whatireallywant]

One of my friends went on a vacation in England and was talking to someone there and completely cracked up when he talked about "sucking on a fag"! That made me laugh too when she told me about it. I knew he was talking about smoking a cigarette though, but it has a completely different meaning here in the US.:biggrin1:

 

[dong20]

1) fag (British for 'cigarette') is a shortened form of 'fag-end', meaning the 'last piece' of something. It was used originally to refer only to the unsmoked portion of the cigarette, but over time came to refer to the entire cigarette. It has no shared etymological ancestry with the term 'faggot'.

Two other 'meanings' here in the UK, the first not so common these days:

1. Fag as in - "As we go on stage, I'm still wearing my wellies, partly through solidarity with the audience, and partly because it's such a fag getting them off." Glastonbury 1986 Waterboys frontman Mike Scott
2. Faggot as in the offal/meat thingies....

 

[DC_DEEP]

1) fag (British for 'cigarette') is a shortened form of 'fag-end', meaning the 'last piece' of something.
<...>
2) fag/faggot (American for 'homosexual') has often been claimed in recent years to derive from the burning of homosexuals on pires of faggots.
<...>

Hmmm. He left out the musical instrument, faggot.

interesting thread...at first glance i thought it was referring to something else....lol

Thank you, arliss, for dredging up this interesting moldy old post, started by one of our most infamous trolls.:biggrin1: