Polari: The Lost Language of Gay Men (2016) | Hacker News Reader

Polari: The Lost Language of Gay Men (2016)

lancaster.ac.uk

59 pointsrichardhod23 comments

Discussion from a couple of years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15238366.

And from 2015: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10104648

I find it interesting that within the space of a human lifetime these words can go from secret language to common usage, completely divorced from where they came from. I wonder what my Grandparents think when I discuss having a bevvy.

Although that shouldn't really be surprising, as my younger brother will happily use bad to mean good without any context/intonation whatsoever. So if a common word can reverse in meaning in a decade....

> my younger brother will happily use bad to mean good

Here's an example of that from the 1989 movie The Wizard:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVc6xuQfq9Q

He loves the Nintendo Power Glove. It's so bad.

Yes its been around for a while, but the intonation etc clarified the meaning.

My brother doesn't say "that is bad", he says "that is bad".

Then he gets exasperated when I ask him if he means good or not good.

Bad to mean good was certainly in playground use in the UK in the 1970s, in London. If something was particularly good - it was ‘well bad’

"without any context/intonation whatsoever"

I grew up with that usage, I coped very well with that usage. If I'm talking with my 12 year old mates saying "wow that's well bad" it is obvious what I mean. If I bake a new cake recipe and ask you to try it, and you neutrally reply "that is bad", what am I to infer from that? Not "wow that is well bad", or "that's bad ass", or "mmm that is one bad cake".

If Stephen Hawking said "that is bad", what would you infer from that?

> If Stephen Hawking said "that is bad", what would you infer from that?

That he'd faked his death.

That comment of yours is bad.

Almost like it was part of the cultural lexicon then, for some, obscure reason....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_(album)

I would assume those words would leak into the public lexicon without the public realizing their origins.

The gay community back then was largely camouflaged within the few areas they were accepted: artistic communities and long naval voyages (where men having sex with men was considered a reality of life at sea). So people may associate those words with the larger groups which were not suspected of being gay.

Note that some words are from pre-existing English (especially London) slang. I think ‘bevvy’ May be an example of that.

First thought that came to mind was "Oh hey, I know almost all those words in the first list thanks to Monty Python!" My mind is blown.

They were widely used on BBC Radio comedy in the 50s and 60s, less so in the 70s. Also less so on TV.

Most people - including me, and almost everyone else who watched Monty Python - had no idea what they were hearing.

Yes, a good example being the radio show “Round the Horne”. Polari was used to smuggle all sorts of innuendo past the BBC sensors

that reminded me about this video! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8yEH8TZUsk

If you thought this was interesting, it's worth looking up other argots/cants. Here are some interesting examples:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhyming_slang

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thieves%27_cant

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Padonkaffsky_jargon

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shelta

For some reason Cloudflare DNS does not resolve that domain....

  *** one.one.one.one can't find www.lancaster.ac.uk: Server failed

Are you sure it was not just a glitsch?

    $ dig a www.lancaster.ac.uk @1.1.1.1 +short
    www.lancs.ac.uk.
    148.88.65.80
    $ dig aaaa www.lancaster.ac.uk @1.1.1.1 +short
    www.lancs.ac.uk.
    2001:630:80:2ff::80:1

Yeah but if you do the long version the status is SERVFAIL?

edit: It's a known issue: https://community.cloudflare.com/t/www-lancaster-ac-uk-not-r...

...and has been for six months. That's disappointing of Cloudflare, considering the Nasa domain problems reported at similar time were resolved in short order.

What does "female impersonators" refer to here? Surely not transwomen or crossdressers? That seems like an extremely rude term.

It's an old term for drag queens, not for transwomen. It's not offensive.

No, it’s an older mostly UK English term for drag queens. It doesn’t imply anything in particular about gender identity.

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