Have a Gay Old Time/Real Life

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
This page needs visual enhancement.
You can help All The Tropes by finding a high-quality image or video to illustrate the topic of this page.

Examples of Have a Gay Old Time in Real Life include:

Sports

  • In 2008, baseball historians commemorated the 100th anniversary of "Merkle's Boner". To everyone's relief, there was no sponsorship tie-in from Viagra or Cialis.
    • Well, of course not. They warn the user to see a doctor after four hours; 100 years is just taking it too damn far.
  • The University of South Carolina's sports teams were originally called the Fighting Gamecocks, after South Carolina war hero Thomas "the Fighting Gamecock" Sumter. Over time, though, it's been shortened officially to "Gamecocks," and unofficially to fans and detractors alike as "Cocks." However, they appear to have wholly embraced the Double Entendre, as you can get shirts for the swimming/dive team that say "Wet Cocks Go Deeper," and see old ladies with bumper stickers saying "You Can't Beat Our Cocks!"
  • Americans, if you ever go to Australia, don't say you "root" for a sports team. Down here, "root" is slang for having sex. We barrack for sports teams.
  • This sports team.
  • This is probably why careless mistakes in baseball are now called bonehead plays.
  • In the middle ages, archery practice fields were called "butts". So if you were going to practice archery, you'd have to go practice shooting in the butts. This is the origin of calling someone the butt (target) of a joke.
  • Don't forget about Hall of Fame pitcher Gaylord Perry.

Geography

Superintendent Chalmers: Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to my vacation at Lake Titicaca. Let's see you make a joke out of that, Mr. Smart guy!

  • The most important street in downtown Knoxville Tennessee is Gay Street. The street ends in an ironwork bridge over 100 years old that is the Gay Street Bridge.
    • Gay Street in Bath, Somerset, England, manages to take it even further. According to the article on That Other Wiki:

"Gay Street in Bath, Somerset, England, links Queen Square to The Circus. It was designed by John Wood, the Elder in 1735 and completed by his son John Wood, the Younger."

  • Both Wikipedia and Wikivoyage maintain lists of unusual place names. It's not uncommon for a place to be on these lists because they bear a real person's name which looked innocuous at the time.
    • Gay, Michigan is a speck-on-a-map hamlet named after the founder of a local mine. Its lone bar is named the "Gay Bar" and its 4 July parade the "Gay Parade" in an attempt to capitalise on the name.
  • The deeply religious Amish people of Pennsylvania, despite living in a state whose municipalities include such Biblically-named cities as Bethlehem, Nazareth, and even Philadelphia, tend to be found in the vicinity of the village of Intercourse, Pennsylvania.
    • And nearby you will also find Blue Ball.
      • Other US towns, not necessarily in Pennsylvania, are Beaver Lick, Virginville, Hooker, Weiner, Fort Dick, Climax, Okahumpka, Two Egg, Cumming, Ballstown, Grosse Tete, Eros, Dickey, Gay, Fertile, Licking, Conception, Love Ladies, Tingle, Meat Camp, Horneytown, Bunlevel, Big Lick, Desire, Hammer, Finger, Butts, Ding Dong, Short Pump, Threeway, Humptulips, Spread Eagle, Camel Hump and Hoo Hoo.
  • Newfoundland, Canada has Dildo, Come by Chance, and Conception Bay.
  • Fucking, Austria has constant trouble with tourists stealing their street signs.
  • The council on Orkney, Scotland, eventually gave up replacing signs to the village of Twatt. A shop in a nearby town maintains a full-size replica sign for tourists to photograph.

Zoology

  • Boobies! Tell me they would have named them that if they had been discovered recently...
    • As pointed out by The Far Side and its cartoon on unfair animal names. The guy named Clarence was probably supposed to be the punchline, but...
    • The multiple usages of "boobies" are milked for all they're worth by souvenir shops in the Galápagos Islands, where such birds are every bit as common as touristas with a crude sense of humor.
    • The Booby shares the same etymological source as the dolt or lug, namely the Spanish bubi meaning dunce, for their tendency to be easily captured and eaten by wayward sailors. That meaning still exists in American English, but is extremely rare.
      • Was a source of many laughs when two male friends who were birdwatchers were asked by a stranger what they were doing at a nude beach with binoculars and one replied, "We're looking for Brown Boobies." (Honestly, there is a bird called a Brown Booby often seen around that beach).
    • "Tits" are also birds. Some of which are Great Tits. And Blue Tits.
      • "Tit" is usually used for Old World members of the family Paridae. What a New World member of that family is called varies; the crested members, titmice (singular: titmouse), have a similar name, while chickadees, which look more similar to their Old World relatives, ended up being named after what they sound like (thus avoiding Accidental Innuendo when talking about them).
      • You can find nice tits here.
        • They are actually called the Royal Tit-Watching Society of Britan. Oh. My. God.
      • UK website The Register has often had fun with The BBC's tendency to schoolboy humour regarding these species. One such article was memorable for its headline alone -- "BBC continues to milk great tits".
    • In British English at least, as well as "bird" and "breast", "tit" or "booby" also means "idiot". This was used in many episodes of Only Fools and Horses, where Rodney would point out to Derek that his company's name (Trotter's Independent Traders) formed the acrostic "TIT".
    • Tits, boobies, and as if ornithologists weren't pervy enough already, Shags!
    • Don't forget the woodcock!
    • Or the dickcissel!
    • The Bolivian Tree Lizard has "already wiped out the Dodo, the Cuckoo, and the Ne-Ne, and it has nasty plans for the Booby, the Titmouse, the Woodcock, and the Titpecker".
    • Given some current slang for male anatomy, Woody Woodpecker cartoons suddenly become a lot more entertaining the second time round.
    • Ah, a handsome cock-of-the-rock!
    • There's also a kind of beetle called the cockchafer. What's more, there have been a long line of Royal Navy gunboats with the name HMS Cockchafer.
  • Sperm Whales. Especially considering that someone wrote a story about one named Moby Dick.
  • Asses. You know, donkeys.
  • The word "cougar" can mean either a North American species of wildcat, or an older woman sexually interested in younger men. Fortunately for the cats' reputations, though, the alternate names "puma" and "mountain lion" don't carry any amusing connotations.
  • The human species Homo erectus was named so back in the late 18th century (at the time, it was the oldest hominin known to walk on two legs, i.e. "erect"). Fast forward to the present day, cue some sniggers and homosexual jokes.

Names

  • There is a burger chain in California (and Arizona and Nevada now) called In-N-Out. While their burgers are almost universally loved and is considered a staple of Californian Culture, its name leads to snickers every now and then from those unfamiliar with it. (It was named that as the first In-N-Out was a drive-thru, which at the time was very unique.)
    • In-N-Out's burgers are well known enough and liked enough to keep the name grandfathered for some time.
    • Neil Young's Tear Jerker song "You Never Call" is about the sudden death of a close friend, talking about how he took Neil's son to In-N-Out stands after hockey games. At shows outside of California, this song gets big laughs.
    • On top of all that, the name is a bit ridiculous because it's not uncommon to wait a good half an hour or more for your food, due to the fact that everything is made fresh to order. More like In-N-Wait.
  • The Russian ruler known in English as "Ivan the Terrible" is a victim of this trope; if his nickname had changed along with the English language, he would be called something like "Ivan the Terrifying" instead.
    • And in original Russian the meaning of his name is closer to "Ivan the Stern" or "Ivan the Fierce".
  • The name "Vladimir Putin" transliterates rather clumsily into French. To avoid the word « putain » (prostitute), most francophone media will stick with « Vladimir Poutine » (where « poutine » is fries with cheese curds and gravy).
  • Gay does exist both as a family name and as a given name.
  • Let's not forget an actor by the name of Dick Van Dyke.
  • Gaylord is still the name of a popular hotel chain in the U.S. South. They even sponsored a college football bowl game for awhile.
  • Ludwig Bieberbach - German mathematician, Nazi sympathizer, and no longer mentionable without chuckling.

Other

  • The planet Uranus has quite a bad reputation. True statements like, "Uranus is big and blue." "Uranus is full of gas." "Uranus is so big, it has its own gravitational pull" don't help matters at all.
  • This trope is Older Than Feudalism: the 1st century rhetorician Quintilian complains about people who giggle at phrases like "patrare bellum" (finish off = make orgasm, in the slang of Quintilian's era] the war/pretty boy). And apparently there was no reason to take Vergil's "incipiunt agitata tumescere" (stirred up, they begin to swell) with any other meaning, either...
  • The Gay Nineties.
    • There was a supper club in Boston called 'The Gay Nineties' as late as 1950.
    • There was a pizza place called "Dirty Dave's Gay Nineties" in Olympia, WA, USA. As of 2010, it dropped the latter part of the name and is now simply the slightly less suggestive "Dirty Dave's".
    • There used to be a chain of hot dog restaurants in Indianapolis called Gay Dan's, complete with a mascot of a man in a brightly colored outfit. The mascot disappeared and the chain changed its name to "Mr. Dan's" in the early 80s for some mysterious reason.
  • The expression Gay Paree is still used as a humorous nickname for Paris. However, the associated stereotype of Frenchmen kissing each other on the cheek has long been played for Ho Yay.
    • Both the meanings are used at the end of the '70s song "Georgina Bailey"; the eponymous character is infatuated with her uncle, but at the end he explains to her that he has a boyfriend; in doing so he actually uses the phrase "Gay Paree".
    • Both meanings are implied in the song "Gay Paree" in the movie and musical "Victor/Victoria".
  • One should be a bit wary when talking about eggs in Finnish, as the word "muna", which means "egg", is also a very common slang term for penis. The plural, "munat", isn't much better since it, on the other hand, can and often does refer to testicles.
  • At British Public Schools the stereotype of homosexuality is not helped by the practice of some boys acting as "fags" for others. The word means servant. Another meaning is American slang for homosexual. It is difficult not to see innuendo in works where the term is used. See, for instance, the Raffles stories.
  • In C. S. Lewis' account of his school, practically everything revolved around the "bloods" and the "tarts", and that meant exactly what it sounds like it means.
  • A British paper ran a story on George Michael quitting smoking under the headline "He's Trying To Give Up Fags"; on the very same day, Mr. Michael was caught exposing himself to an undercover officer in a public restroom, an odd little coincidence pointed out and mocked on The Daily Show that week.
  • Some mills in northern England used to have an official "knocker-up"; this was a bloke who went round the streets about half an hour before work started awakening the workers.
  • To continue the British trend, a phrase referring to someone's sexuality is "As gay as Christmas" (Also used in Life On Mars)
    • There's also "gay as the first day of spring".
    • "First of May, first of May..."
      • Americans have "gay as springtime." which has weathered the change just as well.
  • Thong is still used to refer to a strap of leather in the United States but, again, it also has the other meaning.
  • "Burlesque" used to mean a stage show that would include parodic takes on plays and books. Now, at least in the US, it's an X-rated stage show involving striptease.
  • "Straight" has, for a very long time, had a variety of figurative meanings that center on the concept of "normal, ordinary". Some of these are still in use ("I'll have my vodka straight"), while others are fading or long gone. Current common usage is Sexual identification ("not homosexual; heterosexual"). A memorable example is a 19th-century preacher's letter, in which he explains -->"Like the Indian's tree, I was once so straight that I leaned a little the other way."
  • "Vanilla" is also difficult to use. It used to be "vanilla" as an adjective either referring to the actual flavor/plant or to "the standard setting." Nowadays, vanilla implies boring, bland (as in taste, vanilla being figurative for a default flavor) or (sexually speaking) not being into anything particularly kinky.
  • In parts of Ireland and England, "meet" means "French kiss". Hilarity Ensues: "I met John at the gig on Friday." etc.
  • The Swedes and the Norwegians use 'mus' (mouse) for the same purpose we use 'pussy'. Sadly the word for the device attached to your computer is exactly the same.
  • A 1920s magazine article about teens getting caught up in jazz/flapper culture suggested that a concerned father should "Make love to your daughter if necessary!" — in the sense of having a serious, heartfelt talk together.
  • The initials "L.S.D." mentioned in older British writings don't refer to a hallucinogenic substance but to pounds, shillings and pence. Pre-1971, there was a joke badge saying "I'm an £SD addict".
    • A decade after decimalisation, "LSD calculator" was used as one of the Sinclair ZX81 manual's examples of a BASIC subroutine. This late, the meaning was likely completely lost Across the Pond.
    • The Libra, Solidi and Denarii of classical Rome, which are surprisingly seldom used in fantasy games based off medieval Europe, despite being a perfectly good and effectively authentic monetary system.
      • To bring this into context, the Denarius is a Roman coin worth 10 Asses', from the Greek ἀσσάριον, in English "As" for the singular, "Asses" in the plural. So a man with 42 denarii could be said to have 420 Asses.
  • When Israeli author Amos Oz was 12 years old, his grandfather took him to a Herut party rally to hear Menachem Begin speak. Begin began rallying the Israelis to "take up arms" against "the enemies which have besieged Israel". However, this was an archaic form of Hebrew: in modern Hebrew slang, this could be interpreted as "taking up genitalia" against "the enemies which have fornicated with Israel." Oz burst out laughing, and his grandfather, embarrassed beyond belief, dragged him outside and slapped him. The whole incident is related in Oz's memoirs, "A Tale of Love and Darkness." Oz clarifies that "arm" referred exclusively to the male sexual organ, and "to arm," indicated "the corresponding action."
  • There's a joke that takes advantage of this. Think of a four letter word, ending in "k" that means "intercourse": talk
  • According to a 1959 Camp Fire Girls (now Camp Fire USA) manual, the achievement now known as "Wood Gatherer" was once known as "Faggot Finder." It was changed for obvious reasons.
  • Inversion: In Japanese, prior to WW II, "pants" (pantsu) exclusively meant panties, and "zubon" meant trousers. Nowadays, "pants" refers to both (requiring context to understand which is intended), and "zubon" is considered an antiquated word (Nonetheless, foreigners are advised to always use "zubon" unless they really do mean "pants", because it's safer that way, and the Japanese version of That Other Wiki uses that word probably to cause less confusion, and possibly since it's part of an international project that non-native speakers have access to as well).
  • Much like the English versions of this trope, Mandarin Chinese has the word "Tongzhi" which means "Comrade". In mainland China, the term has come to describe homosexuals. Older people have not caught up on it and still use Tongzhi in its traditional sense.
    • Taiwan, however, also uses Tongzhi in its original meaning.
    • Another Chinese example: In the 1950s, the Chinese army issued a gunnery manual to all its riflemen entitled "All About Shooting Airplanes". Unfortunately, the phrase "shooting airplanes", as used by modern Chinese people, now has an entirely different meaning, and consequently the book has become a minor Internet sensation. Documented on this page.
    • The main reason of course is because the action is somewhat similar to operating an anti-air gun.
  • In Colorado, there is an animal shelter/rescue organization named the Dumb Friends League. It referred to them being unable to speak, but now that the term means "stupid"...
  • The phrase "opposing with manly firmness" in the Declaration of Independence comes off today as, depending on how dirty one's mind is, either a mood breaker or just plain filthy, when the word "manly" would have been understood at the time to mean "unanimous," in the same vein as "daily."
  • The word "ultimate" technically means "last", but these days hardly anyone would learn this sense first. There is a short story was called "The Ultimate Car", which has a mayor fretting over how the arrival of "the ultimate car" has caused gridlock in his fair town. The reader is meant to think, "Well, duh. Everyone's flocking to see this new awesome car." And then the reader learns that ultimate actually means last, and the nature of the gridlock becomes clear: the ultimate car was merely the last car that would fit on the roads.
  • The German word "geil" nowadays means "cool", while before it was along the lines of "wanton" and considered vulgar, and even longer before that it just referred to overgrowth of plants.
    • Depending on context, it nowadays either means 'cool', 'horny' or 'hot' (as in, you make me horny). Dialectally, it can also mean fatty.
  • In Filipino gay lingo, males who have just come out as gay are called X-Men (ex-men).
  • There is an Aesop's Fable called "The Ass, the Cock and the Lion". It's really about a donkey and a rooster facing a lion, but, well, read for yourself.
  • Liturgical Hebrew can be very different from Modern Hebrew. This has caused some uproar when the rav Ovadia Yosef called someone a nemusha (נְמוּשָׁה), LH for 'elder in need of protection’ and MH for ‘wimp’.
  • "Slut" used to mean a slob, usually a female slob. "Slut's wool" meant dustbunnies.
  • Biographies of baby saint Jacinta Marto can come off a bit Squickworthy when dear old Father Cruz comes along and teaches her to ejaculate.
    • "Daddy, why can't I say short prayers like Mummy and the gardener do?"
  • Example from Spanish: In northern Mexico and the southwestern U.S., the slang usage of huevos to mean "testicles" has become so pervasive that one risks embarrassment using the word to buy eggs at the market. Some prudent Spanish speakers have begun referring to eggs as blanquillos ("little white things") instead.
    • Another examples in Spanish, most Spaniards used to get confused when traveling to Argentina, as in that country, words with common, neutral meanings in Spain such as "Coger" (To Take) and "Concha" (Shell, Also a Lady's name) become "To fuck" and "Cunt" respectively. Also worth to mention how Chileans would not understand Spaniards' fonding on take photographies on "La Polla Nacional" (National Lottery) while giggling and nudgin'. "La Polla Nacional" would be kinda "The National Cock" for a Spaniard
    • Also, in Spain, Cristo de la Repolla Street, originally "Christ of the cabbages", nowadays "Motherfucking Christ"
  • The American use of the term "gang banger" to describe gangs of thugs. To folks from the UK, the term exclusively refers to the sexual act, providing accidental hilarity to any American story that uses the term to refer to the former.
    • And even in America, you forget to include proper context at your own peril.
  • There's a statue in the Cathedral of St. Paul in London praising a 19th-century military officer for, among other things, his "coolness". Obviously, it means "calmness", but it's rather amusing to see such a Totally Radical-seeming word engraved on a classical-style sculpture of a historical figure.
  1. ↑ "urine us"
Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Have_a_Gay_Old_Time/Real_Life?oldid=2043418"