Fruit (slang)

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Fruit, fruity, and fruitcake, as well as its many variations, are

reclaiming usage, similar to queer.[4][5][6][7]

Origin and historical usage

In A Dictionary of Epithets and Terms of Address author Leslie Dunkling traces the friendly use of the phrase old fruit (and rarely old

tin of fruit) to the 1920s in Britain possibly deriving from the phrase fruit of the womb. In the United States, however, both fruit and fruitcake are seen as negative with fruitcake likely originating from "nutty as a fruitcake" (a crazy person).[8]

Costermongers and Cockney rhyming slang

The Coster's Mansion, 1899 sheet music

A

potatoes as "bog-oranges" likely developed from the phrase "Irish fruit" also referring to potatoes[11] and "cool the delo nammow" which means 'watch out for that old woman' with the words essentially backwards; cool (look), delo (old) and nammow (woman).[12]

Out of the

chum" (a friend or acquaintance).[13]

Cassell's Dictionary of Slang traces uses of fruit meaning an easy victim in the late 19th century and also as an eccentric person (along with fruitball, fruit basket and fruit merchant).[14]

As gay slang

Fruit as gay slang or

online communication.[15] There is still debate about how Polari originated but its origins can be traced back to at least the 19th century[16] and has multiple origins and routes of dissemination with researchers finding a relatively small base of less than two dozen common (universal words) supplemented by regional phrases. It is believed to be passed on near exclusively by oral history and teaching and was found in traveling professions such as those in the sailing and traveling entertainment industries (like minstrel shows and circuses). In Polari, fruit means queen, which at the time and still today is a term for gay men and can be used positively or negatively depending on the speaker, usage and intent.[17][18]

Several origins of the word fruit being used to describe gay men are possible, and most stem from the linguistic concepts of insulting a man by comparing him to or calling him a woman. In Edita Jodonytë and Palmina Morkienë's research On Sexist Attitudes in English they note "female-associated words become totally derogatory when applied to males"

effeminate or queer men - "queen
, punk, gay, faggot, fairy, and fruit." [22]

From the 1857 "Dictionary of

ejaculate).[26][27]

Fruitcake

An American version of a fruitcake which contains both fruit and nuts.

Fruitcakes, which are cakes containing both fruit and nuts, have been in existence since the Middle Ages,[28] but it is unclear when the term started being used disparagingly, especially in the United Kingdom and the United States, as a slur for a 'crazy person' (e.g., "he's a complete fruitcake") although Cassell's Dictionary of Slang traces uses of fruitcake meaning an eccentric (crazy) person to 1910s.[14] It is derived from the expression "nutty as a fruitcake", which was first recorded in 1935.[29] A nut can be either a seed or a fruit.

By the 1930s both fruit and fruitcake terms are seen as not only negative but also to mean male homosexual,

mental hospitals") where many of these procedures were carried out were called fruitcake factories while in 1960s Australia they were called fruit factories.[14]

From 1942 to 1947,

conscientious objectors in the US assigned to psychiatric hospitals under Civilian Public Service exposed abuses throughout the psychiatric care system and were instrumental in reforms
of the 1940s and 1950s.

Usages

Strange Fruit

"Strange Fruit" is most often a reference to the lynchings of black people in the American South, in reference to

gibbet (used 18th through late 19th centuries) refers to a hanged man[37] and derives from the Halifax Gibbet Law under which a prisoner was executed first and his guilt or innocence determined afterwards.[38][39]

"Strange Fruit" as a song and concept has been used in

ethnographer E. Patrick Johnson's one-man show (which toured the US between 1999 and 2004),[42] and drag queen Monét X Change's cover and music video. The combination of the song's meaning and the derogatory history of the word for queer people has created a subgenre of adaptions speaking to the intersection of anti-Blackness and queer issues.[43]

"Fruta Extraña,"

blue-collar borough that is a bastion of Latin machismo" The show was also broadcast on Manhattan Neighborhood Network and Queens Public Television.[45]

The fruit machine

The

top men."[47]

Other devices involved showing subjects pictures of seminude men and measuring eye movement or attention span.

"Basically they'd show suspected homos slides of naked men and measure their responses (dilated eyeballs, sweaty palms). The poor dilated sweaty souls would then be fired or arrested. Needless to say, the Mounties' machine was a crock: after a decade of breathtaking inaccuracy, it was consigned to mothballs."[48]

ITV Productions 1988 thriller about two Brighton gay teenagers running from an underworld assassin and the police.[49][50]

On 8 July 1992 The Fruit Machine weekly club for "queers, dykes and their friends" opened at England's largest gay dance venue Heaven in London and recently celebrated their fifteenth anniversary.[5][6]

Fruit salad

On June 1, 1963,

male hustler seeking love while working the streets of New York City, Los Angeles, and New Orleans. It was later revealed that the book was at least partly autobiographical.[52] The protagonist has sex with "men for money but with women to prove his masculinity intact" with the book exploring seedy gay sex and those who deal with the criminal aspects of it.[53] Over three decades later Rechy complained noting "I'm no longer young, I understand the attack, and I protest the abuse and its recent extension" referring to the reprint of the review in a 1988 collection of reviews, Selections which was again rerun, intact, in 1996. He specifically cites the title and adds that City of Night became an international bestseller, has never been out of print, is taught in literature courses and is considered a modern classic.[54] In an interview in Poets & Writers it was revealed by Chester's once-editor Edward Field that "the title of the offending review…was not Alfred Chester's but the New York Review of Books's."[54]

In South Africa, fruit salad refers to male genitals

marijuana and hashish called a fruit salad bowl referring to the pipe used to smoke the mixture, the later two in the context of gay men partaking of them.[56]

Frozen Fruit

A

uninterested gay man.[37]

Suck a Fruit for Anita

In the 1970s

St. Bernards and to nail biters." In response gay activists countered with the slogan Suck a Fruit for Anita playing on the words to imply that oral sex ("Suck") with other gays ("Fruit") was an appropriate response.[3]

Fruit Loops

Jonathon Green, author of Cassell's Dictionary of Slang, lists several definitions for "Fruit Loops" including the loop at the back of a man's shirt collar which can be used to "hold a victim ready for buggery" (circa 1980 on college campuses), gay men[58] and an area where they hang out and cruise each other.[56] "Fruit Loop" can also refer to a cluster of gay bars, stores and businesses like Las Vegas' "Paradise Fruit Loop" just off the Las Vegas Strip.[59] A fruitloop can also refer to a person considered crazy.[14]

Fruit Loops, (also singular Fruit Loop and Fruitloops) are also

gay pride or solidarity with LGBT people that were popularized in the 1990s.[56][60]
For National Coming Out Day (United States held 11 October) students have made home-made versions of the "freedom rings" with actual Froot Loops cereal.[citation needed] As a fundraiser, an LGBT student group has made
Rice Krispies treat using Froot Loops cereal and called them "Fruity Gay Bars".[61]

Fruitloops may also refer to queer dance parties, particularly with electronic music.[citation needed]

Fruit Punch

Fruit Punch was one of the first gay radio show in the United States,[62][63] and possibly the world, which aired weekly from 1973 to 1979 from Berkeley radio station KPFA,[64] the first listener-supported radio broadcaster in the United States. Audio from the program is archived by the GLBT Historical Society in San Francisco.[65]

Fruit stand

In South Africa a fruit stand is a

male hustlers.[56]

In 1983, Frank Robinson, then manager of the San Francisco Giants, joked that the team is planning to have a special seating section for gays. “Instead of a grandstand,” he says, “We’re going to call it a fruit stand.”[66]

Speaking of "celebrated

Warhol superstar
Dorothy Dean, author Hilton Als writes (she) "reigned, with both cruelty and compassion, over that site of urban gay culture she called 'the fruit stand'."[67] It is unclear whether she was referring to The New Yorker where she worked or Manhattan where she socialized.

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

religious community. The main character is a young girl named Jeanette (Jess in the TV serial) who is adopted by evangelists
, who believe she is destined to become a missionary. However, Jeanette finds herself subject to desires and feelings that contrast with the beliefs of the evangelical church. Because of these feelings, she finds herself subject to horrific practices and exorcisms, encouraged by her mother and her mother's friends.

The novel interweaves Biblical passages thus exploring the tension many LGBT people have with organized religion and Christianity in particular. The phrase "

lifestyle choice and that God does not approve of homosexuality
.

See also:
Homosexuality and Christianity, List of Christian denominational positions on homosexuality, and The Bible and homosexuality

Tropical Fruits

Tropical Fruits is the name of an LGBT

vanilla boys,” she laughs, “and we all hang out here together. Our parties are very camp, very queer – we embrace the full queer mix.”[7]

Fruit Juice

Fruit Juice is a name of a magazine started in 1988 by "two

NSW Australia that was a focal point for the formation of the Tropical Fruits community group.[7] It can also refer to semen for or from a gay man.[14]

Fruit fly

People who associate with lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people may be called fruit flies[68] (along with fruit bats)[14] regardless of their sex. Fruit fly can also refer to a gay man.

Females associated with gay males are also known as fag hags, whereas men associated with lesbians are known as dyke tykes,[69] Dutch boys,[citation needed] lesbros[70] [71] or lezbros.[72]

In South Africa the definition seems more stringent as a woman with only gay male friends[55] while in Filipino culture "fruit fly" is based on a metaphor of a woman buzzing around gay men.[73]

See also

References

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Further reading

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