An American Psychological Association report notes that homosexual "has been associated in the past with deviance, mental illness and criminal behavior," which has led to a "negative stereotype." As that connotation wears off, I expect that the noun -- a standard English synonym for the now widely used "same-sex" -- will make a comeback.
We know where lesbian (no longer capitalized) comes from: the Greek island Lesbos, "after the alleged practice of Sappho" as the Oxford English Dictionary carefully puts it, home of the poet (formerly poetess) who made the place famous. The word gay, which originally meant "lighthearted" as in "her heart was young and gay," was British slang for "a loose woman" in 1825, turning into "a homosexual boy" in 1935 and gaining that meaning in US slang in the 1950s. (Forget the meaning of "cheerful;" the call letters of a Washington radio station, WGAY, are long gone.)
First use I can find of the compound adjective same-sex is a headline in the May 29, 1970, Valley News. of Van Nuys, California, "Rise of Same-Sex Marriage Stirs Legislation Move." That headline fits today over articles from Maine to Kenya.
RETRACTION, DOC
In a recent column about the latest baseballingo, I took a "fanciful leap" about the origin of the Bugs Bunny change-up pitch, speculating that the deceptive slow ball had its origin in a fable by Aesop. A few readers (actually, several hundred) set me straight.
Typical was this from Michael Greicius, a neuroscientist at Stanford, and his son Quinn: "A much less fanciful provenance of this term links it to a 1946 Looney Tunes short called Baseball Bugs, in which Bugs, playing all nine positions, single-handedly defeats the Gas-House Gorillas. Facing oversize, unshaven batters, Bugs delivers a change-up so devastatingly slow that he is able to strike out the side with one pitch."
While at bat, I recalled how Brooklyn Dodger fans called the "fall classic" the "World Serious." Whiffed again; Ring Lardner fans call attention to that locution in his 1914 collection of stories, You Know Me, Al.
Fortunately, I asked for readers' help on the origin of go yard, meaning "to hit a home run." Some fans were sure it started at Oriole Park in Camden Yards in Baltimore; other Googlers found 466 usages of "hit the ball out of the yard," while the Factiva database turned up a 1988 Chicago Tribune citation: "A batter with power can hit a ball out of the ball yard ... he can go back, go massive or go yard."
Swing and learn.
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