Talk:Let's Sing a Gay Little Spring Song/@comment-9889012-20150615232401/@comment-961279-20150705194544

Even though I know your purpose in asking this question was for trolling, I'll provide the answer.

In 1942, the common definition of "gay" was "merry, lively", the same way that the Christmas carol Deck the Halls, with its line "don we now our gay apparrel" means "bright or showy". Though dictionary.com states that there is a history of using the word "gay" back in the 17th century in the manner it is today, I guarantee the people writing these songs were not thinking "let's sing a little spring song that conveys our sexual orientation" nor "let's wear clothing that indicates our sexual orientation".

If anyone has watched the Hugh Laurie interview on Inside the Actors Studio, he had a similar reaction when he read the lyrics for the school song where he attended when he was much younger because some of those words had new meanings in the decades since he was there. Go back and read the Sherlock Holmes novels and you'll find a couple instances of a word that doesn't just mean "talking" any more, which Stephen Fry pointed out in one episode of his game show Qi.

So, yeah, if this song was going to be written today, different words would have been used. But because it was written 73 years ago, the words in it are correct and we just have to remember that there is more than one definition for that word than what is most commonly used today.