On the other hand when used with a derisive attitude (e.g. "that was so gay"), gay is pejorative. According to BBC, among younger generations in UK, the word 'gay' sometimes is used in a non-sexual pejorative meaning, equivalent to 'rubbish' or 'stupid'.

Etymology

Gradually, by the 1990s, "gay" became rarely used for its older meanings, and if it was so used, seemed either dubiously innocent or charmingly antiquated.

The derived abstract noun gaiety remains largely free of connotations of sexuality. But "Gaiety" was also a common name for places of entertainment. One of Oscar Wilde's favourite venues in Dublin was the Gaiety Theatre.

Sexualization

The word started to acquire sexual connotations in the late 17th century, being used with meaning "addicted to pleasures and dissipations." This was by extension from the primary meaning of "carefree": implying "uninhibited by moral constraints." A gay woman was a prostitute, a gay man a womanizer and a gay house a brothel.

The use of gay to mean "homosexual" was in origin merely an extension of the word's sexualised connotation of "carefree and uninhibited," which implied a willingness to disregard conventional or respectable sexual mores. Such usage is documented as early as the 1920s. It was initially more commonly used to imply heterosexually unconstrained lifestyles, as for example in the once-common phrase "gay Lothario," or in the title of the book and film The Gay Falcon (1941), which concerns a womanizing detective whose first name is "Gay." Well into the mid 20th century a middle-aged bachelor could be described as "gay" without any implication of homosexuality. This usage could apply to women too. The British comic strip Jane was first published in the 1930s and described the adventures of Jane Gay. Far from implying homosexuality, it referred to her freewheeling lifestyle with plenty of boyfriends (while also punning on Lady Jane Grey).

A passage from Gertrude Stein's Miss Furr & Miss Skeene (1922) is possibly the first traceable published use of the word to refer to a homosexual relationship, though it is not altogether clear whether she uses the word to mean lesbianism or happiness:

The 1929 musical Bitter Sweet by Noel Coward contains another use of the word in a context that strongly implies homosexuality. In the song "Green Carnation," four overdressed, 1890s dandies sing:

The song title alludes to Oscar Wilde, who famously wore a green carnation, and whose homosexuality was well known. However, the phrase "gay nineties" was already well-established as an epithet for the decade (a film entitled The Gay Nineties; or, The Unfaithful Husband was released in the same year). The song also drew on familiar satires on Wilde and Aestheticism dating back to Gilbert and Sullivan's Patience (1881). Because of its continuation of these public usages and conventions in a mainstream musical the precise connotations of the word in this context remain ambiguous.