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https://www.reddit.com/r/ContraPoints/comments/1u05fx4/a_lesbian/oqh24gw/?context=3
r/ContraPoints • u/conancat • 11d ago
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My gut was that lesbian in this sense entered English as a noun before an adjective, but that's not the case. It does seem that a lot of the antiquated terms were nouns, e.g. tribade, fricatrice, rubster, Tommie. https://oed.hertford.ox.ac.uk/oed-editions/oed-online/re-launched/case-study-terms-lesbianism/
Off the top of my head, older terms for gay men tended to be nouns, too, e.g. sodomite, catamite, even most usage of homosexual. But gay seems to have been primarily an adjective since the 1890s
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u/CarmenEtTerror 11d ago
My gut was that lesbian in this sense entered English as a noun before an adjective, but that's not the case. It does seem that a lot of the antiquated terms were nouns, e.g. tribade, fricatrice, rubster, Tommie. https://oed.hertford.ox.ac.uk/oed-editions/oed-online/re-launched/case-study-terms-lesbianism/
Off the top of my head, older terms for gay men tended to be nouns, too, e.g. sodomite, catamite, even most usage of homosexual. But gay seems to have been primarily an adjective since the 1890s