Move forward or backward depending on your opinion to the 19th century. The word changed to mean either a woman who prostituted herself or a man who slept with many women. This is the complete opposite of what we think of today when we think of gays. The irony of going from sleeping with multiple women to having “interactions” with people of the same sex is pretty funny, I think. Today, we don't even think about prostitution anymore when we talk about the term gay, but this just proves the broad spectrum that the word can cover. Gay was also used in a different context than we use it today. Back then, they could say something like “Gay it,” meaning have sex. Today, if we heard this, from a male perspective, we would probably think that it would make for something very colorful or feminine. Being gay at that time was considered an abomination by many people. It was even illegal to be gay in Britain until 1967, but to make matters worse, if a person was thought to be gay or called gay, it would be one of the worst embarrassments of the time. This seems silly to me, because the cultures of ancient Sparta and Greece, like the Thebans, used to accept homosexuality as a normal act, and they also thought it made their soldiers fight harder. strong to impress their enemies.