(NSFW) What is the history of this word?

(NSFW) It started as a group of sticks bound together… into a mighty faggot… I guess it could have reference to a group of penises , hence gay + group of penises or bag of dicks. Also Faggot is a brand of meat balls in Britain.

Huh…if by chance the word was inspired by the meatballs, I wonder since when that company has existed? But the bundled sticks sounds a lot more plausible. Never thought of that because I always thought faggot was one log, but now that I look it up, it’s like you said, bunch of branches wrapped together. Not sure how much I can rely on information from Wiki though lol.

The explanation that I found (www.worldwidewords.org) and that made most sense to me is:

“It’s [most] likely that it comes from a term of abuse — known from the early eighteenth century — for a shrewish, bad-tempered or offensive woman, often as old faggot or silly old faggot. This usage survived well into the twentieth century, until it was eased out by the homosexual sense, still to be heard, for example, on British television shows and films into the 1970s. It turns up, to take just one case, in one of the Ingoldsby Legends by Richard Barham (1840): “The Baron started: ‘What’s that you say, you old faggot?’ He ran round by his horse’s tail; The woman was gone!” [...]

The homosexual sense began to appear in Britain in the 1960s, to judge from a comment in the New Statesman in March 1966: “The American word ‘faggot’ is making advances here over our own more humane ‘queer’.

[Its origin [as a derogatory term for a woman] lay in the bundle of sticks sense — such a woman was regard as a burden, a baggage (a related derogatory term that goes back to Shakespeare’s time).]”

Good info, thank you. Now that I am reading this I think I remember something about Shakespeare and the use of the word for a witch or something, just don’t recall from what work? prolly Cymbeline XD
But once again, the bundle of sticks makes its appearance.

Faggot “male homosexual,” 1914, American English slang (shortened form fag is from 1921), probably from earlier contemptuous term for “woman” (1590s), especially an old and unpleasant one, in reference to faggot (n.1) “bundle of sticks,” as something awkward that has to be carried (compare baggage “worthless woman,” 1590s). It may also be reinforced by Yiddish faygele “homosexual,” literally “little bird.”

It also may have roots in British public school slang fag “a junior who does certain duties for a senior” (1785), with suggestions of “catamite,” from fag (v.). This also was used as a verb. He [the prefect] used to fag me to blow the chapel organ for him. [“Boy’s Own Paper,” 1889]
Source

Thank you for the information.
Now I know this seems random but all this stuff reminds me, there’s these comic books I read as a teen called Mélusine. She is a witch, with some friends, mostly all caricatures of famous horror movie monsters like Frankenstein, Dracula the mummy etc. Mélusine’s closest friend is another witch who is not very pretty, and in one story said friend has to carry a huge bundle of sticks for another older witch. She carries them miles and miles, with the elder witch on top. The prize for this work is eternal beauty, but what she gets as a reward is a mirror.
Just mentioning this on account of the worthless woman explanation that keeps popping up.

@Symbeline You really don’t know that word? I though I’m the only one here…

@flutherother You just made me remember that Roald Dahl writes about being a fag, in the sense you reference in your second paragraph, in his autobiographical book Boy. The seinor classmen would yell “Faaaaaaaag!” and all the assigned “fags” would have to drop whatever they were doing and come running to serve.

@wildpotato and there was also a lot of sexual serving by the older boys of the younger fags in English boys’ schools

Interesting that the origin of that word appears to be English, it’s not a term I heard growing up.
The neanderthal homophobes would use “puff” as a derogatory towards homosexuals, wheras “faggot” rears it’s ugly head in the American dialect.

It may also have grown from the British fag and fagging.

Fag, a British and Australian colloquialism for cigarette;”

“Fag, a junior boy who acts or acted as servant (“fagging”) to a senior boy at a British public school”

“Fag, or faggot (slang), an American English slur for a homosexual.”

So fagging is a term used to denote subservience to an older boy. I bet a lot of fagging went on while the younger one was fagging.

So you see fagging and fag may have been the origination, whereas faggot may have become the poster child word for queers (which was apparently the term faggot replaced) only because it sounded so close to fag and fagging that it was just natural that faggot should become the noun to the verb fagging.

edit: Oh, I see this was already mentioned.

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Nevermind

My stepbrother used it in reference to cigarettes, as in smoke his pole faggot, back in the 70’s I believe.

As the Rolling Stones said in When the Whip Comes Down :

I was gay in New York, just a fag in L.A.

That song from the Some Girls album from 1978 is contemporaneous with the show Soap. And at the time American culture was just beginning to accept equality for gay men, and that acceptance was on the Coasts, definitely not in the fly over states.

So the laughter from the audience was partially the chuckle from an ironic scenario, and also from a bit of discomfort for those just beginning to be aware of gay culture.

@zenvelo Yeah I know that being gay in the 70’s wasn’t well received in a lot of places, but the show does have the gay character who’s a regular. So I guess Soap mustn’t have been for everyone.

@Mimishu1995 I always knew what the slang itself was, and more or less knew that it meant wood. (and that a fag was a cigarette) Only I thought one log rather than a bundle of sticks, I was somewhat close.

According to my Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 11th ed., the term originated in about 1914. ”...usu(ally) disparaging ; a male homosexual…”

As a related off topic I guess…the show also often makes some rather crude jokes about blacks, black slavery, (usually attributed to the black butler character, Benson, who’s also the funniest character in this) Nazis and the Holocaust. The kind of jokes that would be deemed pretty unacceptable today in most American entertainment.

I was a kid when Soap was on the air in the 70s, and I remember Billy Crystal’s character being a bit of a shock to people like my parents, who were vaguely horrified by homosexuality, and couldn’t understand why a gay character needed to be on TV. Didn’t stop them from laughing at the jokes and growing to like the character, though. That’s how change happens, sometimes.

Soap was brilliant, and even better at what it did than All in the Family, I think. Benson was awesome – he got his own spin-off, called… Benson.

Aye, I saw that Benson has his own show and that he actually leaves Soap in the second season to start that…also are you familiar with The Fresh Prince of Bel Air? Their black butler, Geoffrey, was totally inspired from Benson…if I’m wrong, I’ll stick my hand in the fire.

@Symbeline Yes, I totally agree with that! Robert Guillaume was so great – I was thrilled to see him appear as the executive producer of the title show in Aaron Sorkin’s Sports Night. Check that out if you get a chance.