[lbo-talk] It's free! Like the clap!

Philip Pilkington pilkingtonphil at gmail.com
Wed Feb 25 19:11:11 PST 2009


On Thu, Feb 26, 2009 at 2:47 AM, Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:


>
>
> Philip Pilkington wrote:
> >
> > As I pointed out in my
> > first post the word pansy was tied up with the word "pensive", which is
> not
> > only an "artistic" notion but a highly effeminate one.
>
> The problem here is that almost certainly whoever used "pansy" first in
> its sexual sense was not a philologist, and was probably focusing on the
> appearance of the flower or the sound of the word _in English_. How long
> has the colro lavendar been associated with homosexuality. Also, many of
> the terms for gays could only come into existence after homsexuality and
> heterosexuality were invented as social categories in the late 19th
> century. Byron was very probably a sodomite, but he wasn't a homosexual,
> because the category didn't exist then.
>
> There may be some slang terms the coinage of which related to the word's
> etymology, but I doubt it.
>
> Carrol
>
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>

Eh, I agree with you, to an extent. Many terms for gays did only come into existence in the past hundred years (indeed, did "gays" exist before 1968?). But these terms didn't just come out of nowhere. They were based on past meanings of words, they expanded already existing prejudices to "catch" this new minority group.

Already in Elizabethan times the word "pansy" was being used in a derogative sense to denote someone who was "outside the sphere" of civilised, "male" society.

The problem here is that almost certainly whoever used "pansy" first in its sexual sense was not a philologist, and was probably focusing on the appearance of the flower or the sound of the word _in English_.

I'm sorry, but that's simply not how language works. People don't focus on "appearances" or "sounds" of things to create new meaningful words, they try to expand on the past meanings. This is not opinion, its linguistic fact. Lets take an example. I want to describe, in new terms, a person who sleeps too much. I don't describe his appearance or try to do so through the sounds of the words. I relate him to things I associate with sleepiness. Thus I could call him a "pillow-hugger" or a "mattress-junkie" - terrible terms, I know, but the fact is that the creation of new words always relies on the past meanings of said terms...



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