Bona

Polari for good, nice or attractive: one of the core words of the old British gay slang, made famous by Julian and Sandy.

Bona is Polari for good: nice, lovely, attractive, pleasant. A bona omi is a nice man, and anything you like, from a pair of lallies to a pint, can be bona. It is one of the core words of Polari, the slang British gay men used when being gay could land you in prison, and one that almost every speaker knew.

It is a warm word, a little theatrical, and it usually comes with a raised eyebrow. Saying it today is a small act of remembrance: a wink to the men who talked in code in private gay pubs and clubs.

Where it comes from

Bona comes from the Italian buono, "good". It is much older than gay Polari. Green's Dictionary of Slang finds it in English as early as 1690, and in the 19th century among London's street people recorded by Henry Mayhew in London Labour and the London Poor. That fits the history of Polari itself, which drew on the older slang of traveling players, tinkers and beggars, with Italian, Lingua Franca and rhyming slang mixed in.

From the 1930s to the 1970s Polari lived in private gay pubs and clubs, in the theatre and on passenger ships, and bona was everywhere in it. The actor Kenneth Williams was already writing it in his diary in 1947.

Julian and Sandy

Bona reached the whole of Britain through the radio. In the mid-1960s the BBC comedy Round the Horne gave it to two camp characters, Julian and Sandy, played by Hugh Paddick and Kenneth Williams. Their sketches were full of it: one was set at Bona Law, their law firm, and a 1967 episode had a Bona Guest House. A huge audience laughed at jokes it half understood, and the gay listeners understood all of them.

The fame was a mixed blessing. Once the whole country had heard it, Polari stopped being a secret, and after the partial decriminalization of homosexuality in 1967 there was less need for one; by the early 1970s it was widely seen as unattractive and old-fashioned.

How it is used today

Bona survived better than most Polari words. You still hear it in camp banter, and gay businesses have named themselves after it, with bona and vada the favorite picks. Phrases like bona nochy, "good night", turn up whenever someone wants to sound like a queen of the old school. Among Polari words it sits with omi, eek and naff as the ones most likely to come out after the second drink.

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