Kevin's Watch

Covenant looked at her with emotions that seemed to make the bone between his eyes bulge. He had to strain to speak. "What can I--is there anything I can do--to make you Gay again?"

I know it's juvenile, but I can't help but giggle every time I read this.

But in all seriousness, does gay still have two meanings?

At Christmas, my nieces were singing "Deck the Halls" and they sang, "Don we now our day apparel." I corrected them, or at least tried to, and they argued with me. One said, "We just learned this song in Music. I know what it is! Why the heck would it be 'gay'?"

I asked them, "You do know it has another meaning don't you?"

I tried explaining it to them, but they were staring at me all wide-eyed and thinking I was crazy. They only knew one meaning for gay, and it sure wasn't "happy". (They may not have believe me either, judging by their reaction, so they may still only accept one meaning for it.) They were 11 and 12 at the time of this.

When SRD wrote the 1st Chrons in the '70s (much less when Deck the Halls was written), "gay" still had the classic meaning. While the vernacular connotation of the word has clearly shifted in the last four decades, I would not say that the old meaning is entirely dead.

Your nieces' Music teacher is doing them a disservice by substituting "day" in the lyric instead of educating the young ladies on what the word really means.

What's gonna happen when they watch the Flintstones?

When you're with the Flintstones
Have a yabba dabba doo time ...
A dabba doo time ...
-- NOOO!!!!

Savor Dam wrote:
Your nieces' Music teacher is doing them a disservice by substituting "day" in the lyric instead of educating the young ladies on what the word really means.

Agreed. 600 years of context swept into the closet because someone got squeamish over a word having two meanings.

how do they handle to Flinstones' theme?

Just tell them to look up the lyrics on wikipedia or something.

Technically it still has 2 meanings, practically though, probably only one. Still, this is how language evolves.

--A

TV Tropes: Have a Gay Old Time
Other examples of language evolving include: dicks were detectives, a boner was a blunder, queer was odd, making love was courtship ... and rock and roll was loud, raunchy sex.

Gay was her name when TC first met her.
When he asked her that question later she had been through hell and changed her name to reflect that.
TC wasn't actually asking how he could make her "happy" again.
Although it matches up pretty well.
At least that's how I always read it.

That is the correct reading of it HLT. But I think it's probably safe to assume that her name was Gay because she was, well, gay.

--A