Standard Lemma guide
Definitions and examples are grouped by meaning. Pronunciation, history, word forms, translations, descendants, synonyms, antonyms, derived terms, and related words appear whenever the source provides them.
Sound
Each Play button uses your device's default local English voice, or a natural local fallback. The selected voice name appears after playback. This is synthesized speech, not a source recording.
noun
Synonym of catamite: a young man kept by an elder as a (usually passive) homosexual partner.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Usage: dated, slang
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Synonyms: catamite
Antonyms: none provided
noun
Synonym of bottom: a passive partner in a male homosexual relationship.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Usage: dated, slang
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Synonyms: bottom
Antonyms: none provided
noun
Synonym of bitch: a man forced or coerced into a homosexual relationship.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Usage: dated, slang
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Synonyms: bitch
Antonyms: none provided
noun
A gun-carrying hoodlum or other criminal.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided
History
From Yiddish גענדזל (gendzl, “gosling”), from Middle High German gensel, diminutive of gans (“goose”).
By misunderstanding of the 1929 Maltese Falcon quotation above (1.1) (which survived in a popular 1941 film adaptation). The novel was originally serialized in a magazine, Black Mask, whose editor refused to allow vulgarities. Hammett used the word gunsel knowing that the editor would likely misunderstand it as relating to gun, and therefore allow it.
