[quote=@Weird Tales] You are aware that gay meant happy right? [/quote] Gay didn't really mean happy per see. It's one of those words that disappeared because it's context withered away and now the best word to compare it to is happy. That's why, back in the day, you will see both words used in the same sentences. They weren't being redundant, the context was difference. The best way to describe gay is something like "Preppy", but if preppy was cool. It was a socially desirable state of merriment that stopped being socially desirable sometime in the mid twentieth century. Gay would be that state of being where happiness can flow from barbershop quartets and meeting chaste young ladies at ice-cream parlors all while having a chipper, outgoing, and completely family friendly disposition. It's place in society was replaced with words like "Cool" because the social behaviors we consider most desirably has changed, and now we prefer people who show a relaxed comfort with social situations rather than a gitty excitement. A person who acted gay now in the original sense might be seen as dweeb now unless they were a Mormon. I don't know when gay started being used for homosexuality... but i have suspicions that this happened further back then you'd think. I once read a paragraph written in the same century of the American Revolution that seemed to be using the word gay as slang for homosexuality, but it could have been an accidentally prescient wording too. Of course, when you get to the point where gay stops being a useful word in everyday conversation, the homosexual slang is all you have left. So they didn't steal the word like so many people *coughmygrandmacough* think so much as they took a dying word and gave it new life. And the term African American... the only people i've met who used that one without blinking were HR managers, teachers rattling statistics, and white people from so deep in the suburbs that actually meeting a black person was something of a unique once-a-year event for them. Everybody else uses black. Not a good term for a group of people because it is so clinical and sterile... the type of name you might use for something you only touch with rubber gloves and a pair of tweezers. Same problem with homosexuality. No life in those words.