I just thought they got the word for gay from humidity
We have but it’s a bit more complicated. “Schwul” is the old form (for hot and humid) and changed in analogy to “kühl” (~chilly/cool/cold). Simultaneously, homosexuality is associated with warmth for some reason. There is also “warmer Bruder” (warm brother).
So “schwul” was historically used for both senses “hot and humid” and figuratively for “gay”, the literal sense changed vowel to be similar to another temperature related word, while the figurative sense didn’t and they separated into two distinct words.
Extra difficult since the ü-sound isn’t easy for many 2nd language learners so this happens quite often even if people know I suppose.
We have but it’s a bit more complicated. “Schwul” is the old form (for hot and humid) and changed in analogy to “kühl” (~chilly/cool/cold). Simultaneously, homosexuality is associated with warmth for some reason. There is also “warmer Bruder” (warm brother).
So “schwul” was historically used for both senses “hot and humid” and figuratively for “gay”, the literal sense changed vowel to be similar to another temperature related word, while the figurative sense didn’t and they separated into two distinct words.
Extra difficult since the ü-sound isn’t easy for many 2nd language learners so this happens quite often even if people know I suppose.
Thank you so much! I have an etymological dictionary for German, but I haven’t found anything for slang- do you know if something like that exists?
wiktionary is quite resourceful. Often the English page is even better but it’s worth checking both.