Word by Zia Ravenscroft (he/they/it)
Does your mum describe things as a bit ‘naff’ or want to ‘zhoozh’ things up? Mine too. Do you know where these words come from, apart from old British slang? Probably not! They, and plenty of other words still in modern usage, are from the lexicon Polari. Even the word ‘camp’ as a queer aesthetic sensibility, which I could write a whole other column on, comes from Polari.
It began probably sometime in the 1800s across the United Kingdom as a collection of words borrowed from other languages and slangs like Italian, Cockney Rhyming Slang, Romani, Yiddish, backslang, and thieves’ cant. It’s nearly identical to Parlyaree, which was used across fairgrounds, circuses, theatres, but adapted to focus on queer gossip, appearances, and sex.
Polari was used across the 20th century by queer men, from wrestlers and sailors to sex workers and drag performers. Most people in the theatre industry knew it as well. Polari was so well-known that an entire BBC radio drama in the 1960s, Round the Horne, was about two characters coded as gay men who spoke nearly entirely in Polari, introducing it to the general public.
There were many different versions of Polari, most notably the variation between a London East End speaker of Polari, who would have a stronger focus on Cockney Rhyming Slang, and a West End speaker, who may have more theatrical and classical influences. There were about twenty core words known to all speakers, and then there were many different spellings, meanings, and pronunciations of the same word across the different groups of Polari speakers. This gave Polari nearly infinite variations, keeping it flexible and adaptable to suit the needs of the people who spoke it.
And why did gay people even speak Polari in the first place? Until 1967, homosexuality was illegal in the UK, so a special language was needed as a form of protection and secrecy. Using it made sure no random straight person or stranger on the street (who might be law enforcement) would know what you were talking about. Aside from being obviously practical, it was also an exaggerated form of humour and camp performance for bitching with your friends. Polari gave name to queer sex in a way mainstream heterosexual culture hadn’t recognised yet, and most of the verbs had something to do with sex. This made cruising for sex a hell of a lot easier.
Polari fell out of use after the 1970s for several reasons. It stopped being so much of a secret after the popularity of Round the Horne, and after the Sexual Offences Act of 1967, there was less of a need for a secret gay language anyway. The queer rights movements in the 1970s also saw Polari as outdated and unnecessarily camp and effeminate. Polari has been largely forgotten, which I personally think is a bit of a shame. I’d love for my friends to describe me as a ‘fantabulosa homy palone’ with a ‘bene aris’. Go look those ones up.