Introducing: the Word of the Day

Yes I know I’ve been promising to write about serious stuff for a while. But cut me some slack. I feel like being timid and frivolous these days.

In that light, and in light of the discontinuation of the Daily Perv Link (TM), I now introduce Deonandia‘s new recurring service: the Word of the Day.

Today’s Word of the Day is gunsel (courtesy of this source).

Gunsel (GUN-zel –noun), from the German “ganslein” meaning “little goose”, is defined as “the orally passive participant in a male homosexual encounter.”

Today’s word was chosen for its relevance to a bit of cinematic history. Remember the Bogart film, The Maltese Falcon? Remember how Bogie would taunt the young gun-toting thug by calling him, “gunsel”? In the novel, the fellow was supposed to be gay. But the author, Dashiell Hamett, was confident that a contemporary American film audience would not pick up on the nuance, and decided to throw in this arcane reference for the literati, showing that Bogie’s character was in fact taunting gunsel’s sexuality more than his youthful thuggishness. (As a result of the film, the word “gunsel” became conflated with”gunman”, since the thug carried a gun, after all.)

You’re welcome.

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