Gay

Dictionary.com defines the word gay as: having or showing a merry, lively mood, bright or showy, of, indicating, or supporting homosexual interests or issues, and a homosexual person. A couple of centuries ago, the term gay did not have any thing to do with the sexuality of a person, it merely meant that you were happy, joyous, and bright. In today's society the term gay gets thrown around so much people use it in any occasion they feel that it is possible to use. Now the term gay is also attached to a negative connotation, teenagers nowadays use the term gay to mean almost the same thing as words like stupid, dumb, and not cool. The word gay has changed drastically throughout the 20th century, from when it once meant happy, to having or supporting homosexuality, and now just having a negative connotation attached to it.

The word gay derives via the Old French "gai". The word originally meant carefree, happy, or showy and was very commonly used with this meaning in speech and literature. The word started to acquire sexual connotations in the late 17th century, the word gay began to mean: addicted to pleasures and dissipations. This was from the primary meaning of carefree therefore showing no moral constraints or self control. The term gay started getting spread around the teenage population in the early 21st century and has stuck ever since. The definition is not very clear when teenagers use it, it is usually used as a nonspecific derogatory comment towards a person or object as a term of abuse.

As you walk through the halls of any high school, what is one of the popular words that you hear all of the teenagers using? Gay. I would know from experience, the word gay gets thrown around like a baseball and even the teachers know what it means. Usually, the term gay is used in the sense of "that's gay" or "you're gay", this is not used in a positive way. When someone feels that something is not appropriate or fair the words "that's gay" usually come spitting out of their mouths, this usually shows that the person is unhappy or not satisfied. Words like stupid, dumb, not cool, and weird are all different synonyms for the word gay.

At the Video Music Awards a couple of years ago Madonna, Christina Aguilera, and Britney Spears had quite a little incident that brought up a lot of different questions that the public was asking. During the VMA's the three well-known pop stars French-kissed. The main question that everyone

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