derivation of faggot according to Websters

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From: Judy Seigel (jseigel@panix.com)
Date: 08/23/02-11:45:02 PM Z


On Fri, 23 Aug 2002, Steve Shapiro wrote:

> Let me check back with Prof. Jacqueline Tunberg, Dean of the English Dept.
> at Cal State San Diego . . . oops, it's now UC San Diego and . . . she's
> dead. Can't argue with the living, either.
>
> Love ya' Judy.

Thank you, Steve.

My 1966 Webster's unabridged has a couple of paragraphs on the word fag,
as a term for cigarette, for tiredness and as "an English public school
boy who acts as servant to another boy in a higher form." That old
English custom may be familiar to those who have read novels or memoirs of
English boarding school ("public school") life.

The next entry, "fag or faggot" is given as "(origin unknown," slang for
homosexual."

J.


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