gayness
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈɡeɪ.nəs/
rhymes: -eɪnəs
Forms: form: gaynesses
Etymology: From Middle English gaynesse, equivalent to gay + -ness.
Senses: examples: text: And truly, at a short butt, which some men doth use, the peacock feather doth seldom keep up the shaft either right or level, it is so rough and heavy ; so that many men, which have taken them up for gayness, hath laid them down again for profit:
ref: 1545, Roger Ascham, Toxophilus; The School of Shooting, in Two Books, London: John Russell Smith, published 1866, →OCLC, page 124:
text: Let me ſpeak prowdly: Tell the Conſtable, ⁠/ We are but Warriors for the working-day: / Our Gayneſſe and our Gilt are all beſmyrcht / With raynie Marching in the painefull field.
ref: 1599 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Life of Henry the Fift”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act IV, scene iii], page 87, column 1:
glosses: The state of being gay (colorful or festive); display or dressiness.
synonyms: word: gayfulness
word: joy
word: blitheness
word: blithesomeness
word: cheerfulness
word: cheeriness
word: contentness
word: contentedness
word: delight
word: delightedness
word: elatedness
word: elation
word: exuberance
word: exuberantness
word: felicity
word: gaiety
word: gayness
word: gayfulness
word: gladness
word: gladsomeness
word: glee
word: gleefulness
word: gleesomeness
word: happiness
word: high spirits
word: hilarity
word: jolliness
word: jollity
word: joviality
word: jovialness
word: joy
word: joyfulness
word: joyousness
word: liss
word: merriment
word: merriness
word: mirth
word: mirthfulness
word: pleasedness
glosses: The state of being gay (cheerful); gaiety.
examples: text: You cannot blame their gayness, their queerness, their homosexuality on sudden wealth.
ref: 1940 January-June, Allen Bernstein, Millions of Queers (Our Homo America), [Unpublished MS of the United States National Library of Medicine], →OCLC, page 51:
text: Tell Al Sublette I met a great new pianist called Cecil Taylor, [he] plays like [Oscar] Peterson gone Classical, fast runs but Brubeck-Stravinsky-Prokofieff chords, a Juilliard classicist—He, like [James] Baldwin, [is] colored, [and] I think gay,—Baldwin is gay. I don’t dig all this gayness.
ref: 1954 October 26, Jack Kerouac, “Jack Kerouac [Richmond Hill, New York] to Allen Ginsberg [San Francisco, California] Oct. 26, ’54”, in Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg: The Letters, Penguin, published 2010, →ISBN, page 247:
text: I doubt very much that their "gay­ness" had any deep sexual roots. I think it was simply an exotic form of juvenile delinquency.
ref: 1959 May, David McReynolds, “McReynolds Reply to [Seymour] Krim”, in Mattachine Review, volume V, number 5, Los Angeles: Mattachine Society, →ISSN, page 9:
text: Those of us who have been in heterosexual marriages too often have blamed our gayness on the breakup of the marriage.
ref: 1970, Carl Wittman, The Gay Manifesto, New York: The Red Butterfly, →OCLC, page 4, column 1:
text: Were there gay people in the ancient world, or is gayness a uniquely modern category?
ref: 1999, John Corvino, Same Sex, page 185:
text: Their goal was to compel open legal recognition of their beliefs about sex and gayness as being the law in the United States.
ref: 2015, E. Reltso, Our Sex Saturated Society:
synonyms: homosexuality
;
gay
faggotry
hyponyms: lesbianism
coordinate_terms: queerness
glosses: The state of being gay (homosexual); homosexuality; demeanor stereotypically representative of it.
Related terms: sense: gaiety
english: happy; in the sense of
translation: happy; in the sense of
word: The state of being gay