Gay

In contemporary usage, the adjective gay usually describes a person's sexual orientation, being the colloquial term for homosexual. In earlier usage, the word meant "carefree", "happy", or "bright and showy", though this usage is infrequent today. Gay sometimes also refers to commonalities shared by homosexual people, as in "gay history", the ideological concept of a hypothetical homosexual culture, as in "gay music", or to things perceived by others to be typical of gay people, as in the colloquialism, "that is so gay". The word gay is sometimes used to refer to same-sex relationships more generally, as in "gay marriage", although this usage is discouraged by some LGBT supporters: the rationale is that this usage is exclusive of bisexual and transgendered people.citation needed] While gay applies in some contexts to all homosexual people, the term lesbian is sex-specific: it is used exclusively to describe homosexual women. Sometimes gay is used to refer only to men.