23 September 2020
How did a word meaning a bundle of sticks become an epithet for a gay man? It was process of gradual semantic shift over several centuries and continents. This sense of the word is, of course, derogatory and offensive, although gay men have reclaimed it to some extent, and use among themselves is positive in some contexts.
The English word comes to us from the Anglo-Norman faget, meaning a bundle of firewood. The French word appears as early as 12 December 1296 in an order to the Reeve of Pyrford, England from the Abbot of Westminster:
Nus vous comandoms qe vous [ach]atez un miller de busche e demi miller de fagot e facez karier a Westm' en haste.
(We order that you purchase a thousand pieces of wood and five hundred faggots and carry them to Westminster in haste.)
It’s recorded in English a few years later in an inventory from c. 1312. The document is in Latin, but switches to the English word for this item:
xvj capones ij s.viij d. ix gallinæ ix d. iiijc fagotis xviij d. maremium xx s.
(16 capons 2 shillings, 8 pence; 9 hens 9 pence; 96 faggots 18 pence; timber 20 shillings)
Faggots were often associated with burning people at the stake. An early example can be found in the version of the Book of John Mandeville found in the manuscript London, British Library, Egerton 1982, copied prior to 1425. I include the full context of the passage because it is a typical example of a miracle found in medieval saints’ lives:
And betwene þis kirk and þe citee es þe felde floridus. And it es called felde florischt for als mykille as a faire ȝung maiden was blamed wiþ wrang þat scho schuld hafe done fornicacioun, for whilk cause scho was demed to be brint in þat place. To þe whilk place scho was ledd and bun by a stake and fagotes of thornes and oþer wode laid aboute hir. And when scho saw þe wodde begynne to brynne scho made hir praier til oure lord þat as scho was noȝt gilty of þat thing he wald helpe hir and saue hir, þat it myght be knawen tille alle men. And when scho had þus prayd scho went into þe fire. And alssone it was oute. And þase braunchez þat ware brynnand become reed roseres, and þase braunchez þat ware noȝt kindled become whyte roseres full of roses. And þase ware þe first rosez and roseres þat any man sawe. And þus was þe mayden saued thurgh þe grace of Godd.
(And between this church and the city is the flowery field. And it is called the florished field because as much as a fair, young maiden was falsely accused that she had committed fornication, for which cause shew as judged to be brought to that place. To that place she was led and prepared by a stake, and faggots of thorns and other wood were laid about her. And when she saw the wood begin to burn, she made her prayer to our lord that as she was not guilty of that thing he would help her and save her, so that it might be known to all people. And when she had thus prayed, she went into the fire. And immediately it was out. And those branches that were burning became red rosebushes, and those branches that were not kindled became white rosebushes full of roses. And these were the first roses that anyone had seen. And thus was the maiden saved through the grace of God.)
Faggot would become a metonym for burning at the stake, as can be seen from this from the 1583 version of John Foxe’s Actes and Monuments, a book that celebrates Protestant martyrs of the Reformation. This passage is from the April 1554 disputation between Catholic interrogator Hugh Weston and Protestant cleric Hugh Latimer. Latimer was subsequently burned at the stake:
Remember what they haue bene that were the beginners of your doctrine, none but a few flying Apostataes, runnyng out of Germany for feare of the fagot.
There’s a commonly touted popular etymology that the use of faggot as an epithet for a gay man comes from burning homosexual men at the stake. While the word was closely associated with the method of execution, it was never used as a signifier of the person so executed. Nor were men in medieval Europe typically burned at the stake for engaging in homosexual acts—that punishment was usually reserved for those found guilty of heresy or witchcraft. And, the epithet appears on another continent many centuries after the practice of burning at the stake ended. Instead the epithet develops from a different source.
By the early eighteenth century, faggot had come to be used as an epithet for a woman, probably from the idea of it being burdensome to carry, akin to the phrase the old ball and chain. We can see this slang sense of a woman in a poem found in Edward Ward’s 1722 The Parish Gutt’lers:
Poor Knocky sneaking to another
Tavern, there met a Vestry Brother,
And other chosen Friends to treat,
Charging whate’er they drank or eat,
Good Wine, fat White-legs roast and boil’d,
To one Dol Gulpin, big with Child,
A Faggot-Drab beneath their Care,
That lives no mortal Man knows where.
The use of faggot to mean a gay man is originally an Americanism and appears in the early twentieth century, an extension of the epithet for a woman, emphasizing the stereotype of effeminacy, much like queen or fairy. This sense appears in a 7 April 1913 letter by John Reed, in which he uses the word to refer to a drag act:
Mr. Max Hoffmann is very anxious to put on their vaudeville revue, to do this it will be necessary to cut out the “Garden of Girls” scene, [...] also to eliminate “The Fagot Number.”
There are a number of false, popular etymologies for the epithet faggot. We’ve already dispensed with the burning at the stake one. Another is that it comes from the Yiddish feygele, literally little bird, and also used as slang for a gay man. But the Yiddish slang sense isn’t recorded until 1967 and is probably a play on the English epithet, which was well established by then. Another is that it arises from British public (i.e., private) schools where younger students serve as fags to older ones, performing menial chores for them, with the implication that sexual acts might be included. This schoolboy jargon term comes from the verb to fag, meaning to work, to toil, and never had any currency in the United States, where the gay epithet first appears.
So, the semantic changes over the centuries go from a bundle of sticks, to a burden, to a woman, to an effeminate man.
Sources:
Foxe, John. Actes and Monuments. London: John Daye, 1583, 1459. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2020, faggot, n.1, feigele, n.
Harvey, Barbara. Documents Illustrating the Rule of Walter de Wenlok, Abbot of Westminster, 1283–1307, vol. 1 of 2. London: Offices of the Royal Historical Society, 1965, 82. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Middle English Dictionary, 2019, s.v. fagot, n.
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, June 2018, s.v. faggot, n. and adj.
Raine, James. Wills and Inventories, vol. 1 of 4. London: J.B. Nichols and Son, 1835, 18. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Seymour, M.C., ed. The Egerton Version of Mandeville’s Travels. Early English Text Society (EETS), no. 336. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2010, 39. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Ward, Edward. The Parish Gutt’lers. London: 1722, 48. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).