US & UK slang differences

[Jonesgrl5]

How did the UK slang term fag; meaning cigarette, and the US slang term fag, short for faggot; meaning a homosexual male, come to have such different meanings?

[Hippy]

Both terms come from the same root. A "fag end" is from the Middle English "fagge" meaning the frayed end of a length of cloth or rope or an inferior or worn-out remnant. Weavers used it to refer to a broken thread in cloth that hangs loose. It has also come to mean the last part of something.

It s use to mean a cigarette is a 20th Century slang invention from the "fag end" already in use to mean the used stub. It was transferred in American slang to indicate that a male homosexual was an inferior tatter and of no use to society. Its alternative form "faggot" is a corruption of this and not a use of the same word derived differently.

"Faggot", meaning a bundle of twigs or pieces of iron comes from the Latin "facus", in turn from the Greek "phakelos", meaning bundle. This is the origin of the word "fascist" (early 20th Ct. Italian  political movement headed by Benito Mussolini) whose emblem was a bundle of sticks.

 

[woofgang]

I was watching "soap" the other night and heard a Jewish Character use the word "Fegele" for gay. Where does this fit in?

[Hippy]

"Feigele" pronounced fay-gell-a is Yiddish for a little bird, and is applied to gay men with a shy and effeminate nature. Another Yiddish word, "Ganzl" means a young boy kept for purposes of illicit sex by an older man. Both terms are derogatory, and equate roughly with "Queer" and "Sodomite" in their strength although not exactly equivalent meaning.

 

[Peter Pedant]

Hi Hippy

I do not have a dictionary to hand,

but doesnt fascist comes from the fasces? - the bundle of rods carried around, later on with an axe as well to show the power of capital punishment, by one of the magistrates in Rome?

 

[jocook17]

I think lambs brains in gravy are called faggots, aren't they - (could be someother animals brain)