Fag (pronounced fag)
(1) Something hanging loose, a flap (mostly archaic
except in US technical use in industrial production of textiles where, in the
process of quality inspections, a fag is a rough or coarse defect in the woven
fabric).
(2) Slang for a boring or wearisome task (archaic).
(3) The worst part or end of a thing (mostly UK, now
archaic).
(4) Offensive slang for a contemptible or dislikable
person (archaic).
(5) Offensive slang for a homosexual male, applied most
often to an obvious, especially effeminate or “unusual” one (now regarded generally
as especially disparaging and contemptuous although within the LGBTQQIAAOP
communities it can be neutral or even endearing).
(6) To tire or weary by labor; to be exhausted (usually
in the phrase “fagged out”).
(7) One allocated to do menial chores for an older school
pupil (mostly in the English public school system but said to be extinct since
the late 1990s although apparently still practiced in some Commonwealth
countries with public (private) schools based on the old English model).
(8) Slang for a cigarette (now rare, especially in North
America); the Cockney rhyming slang was “oily rag”.
(9) As fag-end (as in the last un-smoked end of a
cigarette), a remnant of something once larger, longer etc such as the frayed
end of a length of cloth or rope.
(10) As fag-end administration, the last months or weeks
of a government prior to an election.
1425–1475: From the late Middle English fagge (flap; broken thread in cloth,
loose end (of obscure origin)), the later sense-development to the intransitive
verb meaning “to droop, to tire, to make weary; drudgery” apparently based on
the idea of “a drooping end” or “something limply hanging” dating from the
1520s. The transitive sense of "to
make (someone or something) fatigued, tire by labor" was first noted in 1826. Those fagged-out fatiguing labor were in the
1850s said to have been engaged in “faggery” and from the same era “brain-fag described
"mental fatigue." Fag is a
noun and verb, fagging or fagged are verbs and faggish & fagged are adjectives. Apparently un-fagged is a correct
construction which may be used to describe the process of cutting the ties binding
a bundle of sticks.
The meaning “cigarette” dates only from 1888 and was
derived from fag-end (applied to many things and attested since the 1610s) and
thus a cigarette butt was one of many fag-ends but “fag” (and the plural “fags”)
came much to be associated with cigarettes.
Fag may be variant of the verb “flag” in the sense of “droop, tire” and
related (perhaps remotely) to the Dutch vaak
(sleepiness).
The use in the English public (private) school system to
describe a "junior student who does certain duties for a senior"
seems first to have been used in 1785 although the practice is documented from
the seventeenth century. The schoolboy
slang describing the offices of the institution as “fagdom” & “fagmaster” dates
from 1902.
As a shortening of faggot, “fag” is documented as being
applied as a term of disparagement to homosexual males from 1914, an invention
of American English slang, though related to the earlier (1590s) contemptuous
term for a woman, especially an old and unpleasant one, in reference to faggot in
the sense of "bundle of sticks", ie something awkward that has to be
carried in the sense of "worthless baggage” (and therefore “worthless woman").
More speculatively, there may be a link
with the Yiddish פֿייגעלע (feygele) (literally "little
bird” but used (1) as a term of endearment for a loved one, especially a man's
wife and (2) in a derogatory manner: a faggot homosexual man). There may also have been some connection with
the English public school slang noun fag which even then carried the suggestion
of catamite (From the Latin catamītus
(boy kept as a sexual partner), from Catamītus,
from the Etruscan catmite, from the Ancient
Greek Γανυμήδης (Ganumḗdēs) (Ganymede), in Greek
mythology an attractive Trojan boy abducted by Zeus and taken to Mount Olympus to
become his cupbearer and lover (and Ganymede endures as a doublet in that
sense)).
In the same way the infamous N-word has been re-claimed by
certain sub-sets of people of color and is, in context, an acceptable use by or
between them, “faggot” similarly, although now regarded generally as especially
disparaging and contemptuous, within the LGBTQQIAAOP communities it can be
neutral or even endearing. Two inventive
variations were “fag hag” (a heterosexual woman who socializes with homosexual
men (1969)) and “fag stag” (a heterosexual man who socializes with homosexual
men (circa 1995)). The less common
companion slang for men who have many lesbian friends was “dutch boy”, “lesbro”
or “dyke tyke”. Covering all bases, it
transpires that those of both sexes who associate with lesbian, gay and
bisexual people are “fruit flies”.
The story that male homosexuals were called faggots
because they were burned at the stake as punishment is an urban legend with no etymological
or historical basis. Burning sometimes was a punishment meted out to
homosexuals in Christian Europe (which relied on the scriptural suggestion invoked
as the Biblical fate of Sodom and Gomorrah), but in England, although parliament
had declared homosexuality a capital crime in 1533, the prescribed method of
execution was to be hanged. While the
inquisitorial and judicial organs of the Roman Catholic Church may over the
centuries have burned a good many homosexuals, it was often for other offences.
Faggot was from the Middle English fagot, from the Middle French fagot
(bundle of sticks), from the Medieval Latin and Italian fagotto and related to the Old Occitan fagot, the Italian fagotto
& fangotto and the Spanish fajo (bundle, wad). In Italian a fagotto was (1) a bundle or sack, (2), (figuratively) a clumsy or
awkward person; a klutz or (3), in music, a bassoon and was probably from the
Italian fagotto (diminutive of Vulgar
Latin facus, from the Classical Latin
fascis (bundle of wood), or perhaps
the Ancient Greek φάκελος (phákelos)
(bundle). The senses relating to
persons, though possibly originating as an extension of the sense "bundle
of sticks", could have been reinforced by Yiddish פֿייגעלע (feygele)
(literally "little bird” but used (1) as a term of endearment for a loved
one, especially a man's wife and (2) in
a derogatory manner: a homosexual man).
In English, “fagot” was long the alternative spelling.
Fairytale of New York (1987) is a song by the Irish pop-band The Pogues,
augmented for the occasion by the late Kirsty MacColl (1959-2000). One stanza includes the lines:
You're a bum
You're a punk
You're an old slut on junk
Lying there almost dead on a drip in that bed
You scumbag, you maggot
You cheap lousy faggot
Happy Christmas your arse
I pray God it's our last
The offending line quickly became: "You cheap lousy faggot" and for
many years, every Christmas, there was in England an almost ritualistic
argument about whether it was appropriate to play the piece on radio, a matter
of some interest because Fairytale of New
York was frequently voted the nation’s most popular Christmas song.
In the late 1980s the BBC seemed unconcerned at the
possibility of a gay slur being thought at least implied but found the anatomical
slang offensive, asking that "arse" be replaced with “ass” which was
a liberal approach compared with the old BBC tradition of outright bans but
sensitivities shifted to gender in the 1990s and in subsequent live performances
MacColl sometimes adjusted the lyrics further, singing "You're cheap and you're haggard". Since then broadcasts have varied in the version
carried, the BBC even permitting all or some of “arse”, “slut” & “faggot” on
some of their stations but not others. There’s
was also use of the old practice “bleeping out” (actually scrambling) “arse”, “slut”
& “faggot” as required and it’s now fairly unpredictable just which version
will be played. It did seem one of the
more improbable battlefields of the culture wars but was emblematic of the new
censorship. Although, in the context of
the song, it was obvious “faggot” was being used in the old sense of meaning “someone
worthless” with no suggestion of any gay association, the objection was to the
very word itself which activists demand should be proscribed.
North American F-86 Sabre (left) and Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 (right).
A well-crafted amalgam of technology stolen from the West
(the airframe construction techniques from the US, the jet-engine a blatant
copy of the British Rolls-Royce Nene and the aerodynamics the result of wartime
German research), the USSR’s Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 (1947) was a short-range interceptor,
the appearance of which in the skies of the Korean War (1950-1953) theatre was
such a shock to the UN forces that the US Air Force (USAF) had to scramble to
assemble squadrons of North American F-86 Sabres (1949) for deployment. Made in both the USSR and by licensed
overseas constructors, the MiG-15 was produced in extraordinary numbers (some sources
suggest as many as 17,700) and equipped not only Warsaw Pact militaries, some
three dozen air forces eventually using the type and it was widely used in front-line
service well into the 1960s. Simple,
robust and economical to operate, many still fly in private hands and some
continue to be used as jet-trainers, ideal for the role because of their
predictable characteristics and good handling.
The MiG-15’s NATO reporting name was Fagot. NATO reporting names have no linguistic or etymological significance, being chosen (1) with an initial letter indicating type (B=bomber; F=fighter; C=commercial & cargo; H=helicopter; M= miscellaneous) and (2) a one-syllable name for propeller aircraft and a two-syllable name for jets. Fagot was just another reporting name picked from NATO’s list of the possible for allocation to fighters:
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