Gay slangs
Glossary of Terms: LGBTQ
Definitions were drafted in collaboration with other U.S.-based LGBTQ collective organizations and leaders. See acknowledgements section.
Additional terms and definitions about gender identity and gender expression, transgender people, and nonbinary people are available in the Transgender Glossary.
Are we missing a term or is a definition outdated? Email press@glaad.org
*NOTE: Question people what terms they use to describe their sexual orientation, gender persona and gender utterance before assigning them a label. Outside of acronyms, these terms should only be capitalized when used at the beginning of a sentence.
LGBTQ
Acronym for lesbian, queer , bisexual, transgender, and queer. The Q generally stands for queer when LGBTQ organizations, leaders, and media use the acronym. In settings offering support for youth, it can also stand for questioning. LGBT and LGBTQ+ are also used, with the + added in recognition of all non-straight, non-cisgender identities. (See Transgender Glossary ) Both are acceptable, as are other versions of this acronym. The term “gay community” should be avoided, as it does not accuratel
While browsing recently through the free back issues of Oz magazine I noticed a guide to gay slang that I didn’t recall seeing before. The underground magazines and newspapers of the 60s and 70s were a lot more tolerant of the nascent gay rights movement than their “straight” (ie: non-freak) counterparts. Oz magazine published pieces about gay rights, notably so in issue 23 which ran an extract from The Homosexual Handbook (1969) by Angelo d’Arcangelo among a couple of other features; the UK’s first gay magazine, Jeremy, advertised regularly in Oz and IT; later issues of Oz carried ads for another gay mag, Follow Up, and there’s a letter in one issue from a gay freak complaining about the state of the few gay pubs in London where the clientele was apparently not freaky enough. (His solution was to try and persuade them all to release acid.) Arguments which still circulate today, between those who yearn to assimilate and those who prefer to remain separate from general society, go back a long way.
The gay slang manual was extracted from The Queens’ Vernacular: A Gay Lexicon by Bruce Rodgers (1942–2009), published in
The Most Popular Diverse Terms in Every State & Male lover Slang Glossary
Published on: 3/10/23
Periodt. Werk. Queen. While these terms were once used exclusively by LGBTQ+ people as a way to converse in public without date — or endangering themselves — shows like RuPaul’s Drag Race (which is in its 15th season and running) are bringing Gay vernacular into the spotlight. So much so, that even phrases like “yas, queen” and “slay” are making their way into the mainstream. With more and more people outside of the LGBTQ+ community adopting this gay slang, it’s worth mentioning where it all began — go in drag queens of color. Many of the popular terms we use today are thanks to the world of kingly, which originated in Harlem, New York, at a second when drag queens slayed the runaway in spaces predominantly made up of African Americans.
So whether you self-identify as a “cub” (a younger looking “bear” a.k.a. someone who is strong, hairy, and lumberjack-esque) or a “lipstick lesbian” (an ultra-feminine lesbian), the team here at Future Procedure wanted to unseal our LGBTQ+ glossary up to educate and remunerate tribute to all the queens who have come before. Using Google Trends search da
For generations the LGBTQ+ people has found unique ways to communicate. For beat or worse, that language is becoming mainstream.
In 2011, RuPaul’s Drag Race season 3 saw need enough to include definitions for slang terms like “fishy” across the bottom of the screen. Watching this season for the first time in 2018, I almost burst out laughing. The thought that a viewer wouldn’t know what “fishy” meant seemed absurd. But that’s what Drag Race, and other touchstones of queer culture,do: launch its viewers to a slew of slang terms that quickly become ubiquitous. In 2016, Bernie Sanders accused the DNC of throwing shade, and the phrase “Yass, queen” has permeated from Broad City gifs to Target merchandise. Queer slang has never been more visible in, and interactive with, mainstream Western culture.
Slang used in gay and queer spaces, while yet to be officially named, is considered an “anti-language”—the vernacular used by an “anti-society,” or a marginalized group within a society. Anti-languages generally aren’t full languages of their own, but “provide… a new and other reality in which [members] can construct and portray alternative (i.e., non-normative) ide