Polari - English gay slang




An American Polari
Ms. Martha Brummett of Denver, Colorado, has collected certain words in the
United States which appear to have a connection with Polari. The table
following these remarks represents her own collection along with her
glosses. She collected these in Memphis, Tennessee, which is on the
Mississippi river. Not all the words are to be regarded as Polari, but I
have preferred to cite this vocabulary as she conveyed it, as it is of
interest in any case. Here are her comments as to how she came to collect
these items. They would appear to belong to the words conveyed by circus
folk:
My older friends had traveled extensively, at least when young, to New
York, San Francisco, at least. They went to New Orleans frequently. Some of
them had been in the Navy, Merchant Marine, or Coast Guard. The older ones
had served in WWI or WWII, and had been to the UK or Europe.

The vocabulary I remember was not as extensive as I've seen reported, and
was mostly sexual. I can recall (using the wordlist) hearing: Aunt Nell,
barkey, bene, bevvy, bod, bold, bona, camp, chicken, cottage, deek (never
vada), drag, facha (never heard "eek" or "ecaf", by the way), gam, grope,
multy, nada, nix (never nanti), palaver, pogy, ponce, punk, rent, trade.
You can see that the Lingua Franca-derived terms, particularly the ones not
very sexual, give the impression of being Italian...

"Facha" was always used, as I pointed out. I recall other instances of what
I assumed was Italian picked up from the Sicilian immigrants to the area,
both to the Memphis metropolitan area and the rural counties of northern
Mississippi. I think there might be a great deal of difficulty in actually
distinguishing these possible origins…

I worked lights for Lillie Cass' drag show, this higher education gained
from that and listening to guys talk at bars, after Poetry Society
meetings, backstage at bars & community theatres, my grandmother's male
antique-dealer colleagues, carnies [=circus-workers] privately and at
second-hand bookstores and coffeehouses...
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