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say it: gay
gay is an adjective and noun meaning "bright and pleasant; promoting a feeling of cheer". It carries 7 recorded senses.
full of or showing high-spirited merriment
“when hearts were young and gay”
“a poet could not but be gay, in such a jocund company”
“the jolly crowd at the reunion”
“jolly old Saint Nick”
“a jovial old gentleman”
“have a merry Christmas”
“peals of merry laughter”
“a mirthful laugh”
given to social pleasures often including dissipation
“led a gay Bohemian life”
“a gay old rogue with an eye for the ladies”
homosexual or arousing homosexual desires
someone who is sexually attracted to persons of the same sex
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for gay come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.