GLR November-December 2025

ESSAY A Pansy by Any Other Name... H UGH H AGIUS

W ORDS MATTER, as LGBT people well know. The labels others apply to us, and those we choose for ourselves, indicate not just an identity but a social role, one that can prescribe and proscribe actions, determining and delimiting whom we are allowed to be. Nicholas Lo Vecchio’s 2020 lexicon, LeDic tionnaire historique du lexique de l’homosexualité , contains 515 pages devoted to the meanings of just twelve words: sodomite, bugger, bardash, tribade, pederast, sapphist, lesbian, Uranian, invert, homosexual, gay, and queer. Lo Vecchio’s dictionary offers much more than just defini tions of those terms. It covers their history over the past 900 years—including variations, derivatives, and combinations— drawing examples from religious, legal, scientific, political, and literary discourse; and it is the first dictionary of homosexual ity to cover five languages: French, Italian, Spanish, German, and English. Of course, the meanings of words change all the time—from century to century, from language to language, even words came from, what fears and aspirations they expressed, how their meanings changed, and how those changes were com municated among the speakers of those languages. U NSPEAKABLE C RIME : S ODOMITE , B UGGER , B ARDASH The survey begins in the early Middle Ages, when the five lan guages were just emerging from their ancient Latinate or Ger manic roots. It was a time when the Roman Catholic Church controlled moral standards and law, which included a strict taboo on all forms of nonprocreative sex, including anal inter course. So severe was this prohibition that such acts could scarcely even be spoken of. But since the authorities needed to refer to these acts to enforce the taboo, various words were used. As Lo Vecchio explains it, they were chosen to express the stigma in a way that referred indirectly to the deed in question and may have subsumed multiple sexual acts deemed sinful or illegal. The word “sodomite” derives from the Old Testament city of Sodom, which was destroyed by God for its wickedness. As a Latin word, it originally meant simply an inhabitant of Sodom, Hugh Hagius, a Harlem-based independent scholar specializing in LGBT history, is the author of Alberto Nin Frías: Vida y Obras and G.I. Hustlers of World War II , among other books. from speaker to speaker. Le Dictionnaire presents its entries in chronological, not al phabetical, order, demonstrating how these words evolved as part of grand historical movements. It is a treatise in sociolinguis tics, and Lo Vecchio examines the social and psychological forces at work—where these

but around the year 1150 CE, it came to mean someone who has committed the crimen nefandum , the crime which is not to be named. From “sodomite” the abstraction “sodomy” was de rived, which was applied to all kinds of bad things, such as heresy and usury, but a “sodomite” was one who engaged in anal intercourse. “Sodomite” arrived in England with the Norman Conquest in the 11th century. “Sodomy” has had a thousand-year run and is still in use, though its meaning has narrowed to the familiar sex ual one. Its importance lies less in its usage in religious discourse than in its legal application. Despite the U.S. Supreme Court rul ing that threw out sodomy laws in Lawrence v. Texas , several states retain anti-sodomy laws, even if they are not enforced. The word “bugger” has a more enigmatic history. Deriving from the Latin Bulgari (Bulgars) in the 1200s, it became the French word bougre , referring to a heretic, which in turn be came the English word “bugger.” Why the Bulgarians were sin gled out is something of a mystery. They were among the Orthodox Christians of Eastern Europe who were regarded as heretics by the Roman Catholic Church but not necessarily associated with a particular sex act. Lo Vecchio explains that “sodomite” was the term preferred by preachers, while “bugger” was a slangier word that was used by regular people to refer to deviant sexual ity, especially anal sex. “Buggery” also found its way into legal usage. Lo Vecchio cites an English law of 1533 (translated here into modern English): An Act for the punishment of the vice of Buggerie: Inasmuch as there is not yet sufficient and condign punishment appointed and limited by the due course of the laws of this Realm for the detestable and abominable vice of buggery committed with mankind or beast … that the same offence be from henceforth adjudged [a] felony. Over centuries of use, the word has lost much of its punch. Lo Vecchio notes that French bougre has worn out the meaning of anal intercourse and has become inoffensive, and in English “bugger” is a mild swear word. “Bardashes” were foreigners like sodomites and buggers, this time from Italy. Some writers have conjectured that the word was borrowed from Arabic, Persian, or Turkish, but the word is not attested in those languages. Bardassa appears in an Italian dictionary of 1478, defined as the bottom partner in anal intercourse. Italian has grammatical gender, so it could be mas culine bardasso or feminine bardassa , but when the feminine form was used, it referred to males. The word arrived in England a century later, and Lo Vec chio cites a 1600 translation from Italian into English (again rendered here in modern usage): “But yet that folly of Nero sur

The Dictionnaire isdevoted to the meanings of just 12 words over 900 years, from “sodomite” to “queer.”

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