Etymology: < Anglo-Norman gai, gaye and Old French, Middle French gai (in Old French occasionally also jai ; French gai ) (of a person) happy, cheerful, (of a face, etc.) that expresses gaiety (second half of the 11th cent.), amorous (c1160), carefree, frivolous, fickle (c1165), licentious, lascivious, lewd (c1165), (of an animal's coat) speckled (c1170), (of the human body) good looking (c1220), (of a horse) spirited, frisky (c1230), (of the colour green) bright, yellowish (in vert gai , c1300), (of a colour) that creates or inspires gaiety (1382), probably (although this is disputed by some: see below) < Old High German gāhi rapid, fast, sudden, surprising, fleeting (Middle High German gāch , gā , gaehe , German jäh ), further etymology uncertain. See also gey adv. and adj.Etymology of the French word. With French gai compare (probably also < Old High German gāhi ) Old Occitan gai , jai joyful (a1126; also as noun, jai , gai joy (a1168)), and also ( < French or Occitan) Catalan gai (c1272), Spanish gayo (15th cent.; 14th cent., or perhaps 13th cent., as noun), Portuguese gaio (1258 as the name of a person), Italian gaio (13th cent.). On the etymology of the French word (and its relationship with the Occitan word) see further discussion and summary of other theories in Dictionnaire étymologique de l'ancien français at gai. For a notable divergent view, rejecting a Germanic etymology completely, see J. Coromines Diccionari Etimològic i Complementari de la Llengua Catalana at gai. Development of specific senses. The senses at A. 2 apparently do not have an exact parallel in French, and may show a development within English. In the gay science at sense A. 3c ultimately after Old Occitan, Occitan gai saber, †gai sauber (1343), gaya sciensa (c1340); compare French gai savoir (1845), gaie science (1694). Development of the meaning ‘homosexual’. The relationship between the various subsenses of sense A. 4 and sense A. 9a is difficult to establish from the available evidence. It seems most likely that the ‘homosexual’ sense A. 9a was primarily a development of sense A. 4b, especially of its connotations of hedonism and lack of inhibition, while the ‘prostitution’ sense A. 4c was a separate development from sense A. 4b. In quot. 1889 at sense A. 4c gay is used by a male prostitute of people engaged in prostitution, but not specifically in the sense ‘homosexual’ (compare quot. 1890 at sense A. 4c, quoting the same source). Some examples of gay cat n. at Compounds 2b imply a relationship with an older tramp involving sexual favours (compare punk n.¹ 2b, gunsel n. 1), but this cannot be taken as earlier evidence that gay itself was being used in the sense ‘homosexual’. See note at sense A. 9a on early euphemistic use of other senses. Compare also the following example of the phrase to go gay (see to go gay at sense A. 4b) in the screwball comedy, Bringing Up Baby, in which a male character wearing a woman's feather-trimmed robe, played by the actor Cary Grant, uses the term in an apparent reference to cross-dressing (then popularly associated with homosexuality):1938 D. Nichols & H. Wilde Bringing up Baby (film script, final revision) 35 David..comes on..in negligee... Aunt: Why are you wearing these clothes?.. David: Because I just went gay, all of a sudden.See also discussion by R. R. Butters ‘Cary Grant and the emergence of gay “homosexual”’ in Dictionaries 19 (1998) 188–204. Support has not been established for statements such as the following about supposed earlier use in this meaning in French:1953 ‘D. W. Cory’ Homosexual Outlook ix. 107 In France as early as the sixteenth century the homosexual was called gaie; significantly enough, the feminine form was used to describe the male. The word made its way to England and America, and was used in print in some of the more pornographic literature after the First World War. Psychoanalysts have informed me that their homosexual patients were calling themselves gay in the nineteen-twenties, and certainly by the nineteen-thirties it was the most common word in use among homosexuals themselves.Dictionaries of French only record the sense ‘homosexual’ for gai as a recent (late 20th-cent.) Anglicism, following earlier (unassimilated) borrowing of the English word in this sense as French gay . By the 1960s gay in the sense ‘homosexual’ (sense A. 9a) had become established as the preferred term of self-reference for many homosexual men. For most speakers this is now the dominant sense of the word, and gay in its earlier meanings of ‘carefree’ or ‘bright and showy’ cannot readily be used today without at least a sense of double entendre (see e.g. discussion in R. W. Burchfield New Fowler's Mod. Eng. Usage (1996) 324).