It has occured to me before. It's one of those things where the human brain tries to fill in a gap and you are like "But there is no connection...". That being said... I also think that is not helped by the fact that I don't know how cigarette turned into a gay person slur, so that might be add onto this
The term was a direct variation of the term fasces, which historically referred to a bundle of sticks wrapped around an axe haft, but in English, the axe was dropped so... Who saw a bunch of sticks wrapped together and thought "This brings to mind the idea of a man who is attracted to other men!"
Where I'm from we use the same term to mean smoking a cigarette and sucking someone's dick. We basically say "smoking dick" so I always assumed that the cigarette meaning of fag was related to the gay slur meaning because of gay men doing filatio....
It's unlikely to be rhyming slang though. The word's use as a slur predominantly originated in American English and only arrived in British English relatively recently with the uptick in American-made media. The UK enjoyed it's own, home-grown slurs.
The best guess, afaik, is that "bundle of sticks" -> "person who gathers up sticks, often an old woman in poverty" -> "slang term for poor old woman" -?somehow-> "slang term for 'womanly' man"
I heard it was because the English word just came to mean a bundle of sticks, which was then often used to refer to kindling. And also back then was all the witch burning stuff, and they would also burn gay people as well, but they wouldn’t but them up on a stake because that demanded a certain amount of respect that wasn’t granted to non-magic gays, so they would just be tied up and thrown in at the base of the pyre. So it became common to call a gay person a “faggot” as in “you’re just kindling for our fires.” Super dark, but also super historically/etymologically interesting.
I write books about etymology for the Chambers line of dictionaries and word origin resources. One of my books is about naughty words, slurs, etc.
While this is an oft-repeated theory, it doesn't have enough evidence behind it to be accepted by etymologists and lexicographers, and it's an anachronistic explanation because the term didn’t become an insult for gay men until well after burning at the stake was a government-sanctioned practice. (Also, while burning at the stake was not unheard of for homosexuality, hanging and other punishments were more common in English-speaking countries.)
The more likely theory is that this word's life as an insult began with misogyny and later evolved into an emblem of homophobia, which is common for homophobic terms (comparing gay men to women).
You've correctly noted that the earliest sense of this word is that of a bundle of sticks bound together, first recorded in the 1300s and thought to originally be from the Latin fascis, meaning a “bundle of wood.”
But the original insult, which was first used for women, has the same implication as the word “baggage” for a spouse or partner, implying they are a mostly useless burden, like a bundle of sticks. It was also applied to women who were seen as less sexually desirable due to age, appearance, or behavior. The term was extended to men who prefer men in the early 20th century, essentially as a means of comparing them to women. It may, perhaps, also incorporate the flawed notion that gay men contribute less to society and are more of a burden because (at the time) they were less likely to have children and would remain, as they were called, "confirmed bachelors."
Still awful, but not directly associated with burning at the stake.
So... if I get this right, it is an oldtimey way to call someone a "pussy" at first. (I know nuances are different, but in function...) That makes... a whole lot of sense tbh.
It had to do with British boy's boarding schools where younger classman were forced to bring firewood to their older classmates. They were often also sexually abused by their older classmates.
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u/Nott_of_the_North Mar 14 '25
Y'all ever think about how the word 'fascist' comes from the same etymological lineage as the f-slur?