Nelly

Effeminate: describes a gay man whose voice, gestures and manner are visibly feminine; as a noun, an effeminate gay man.

Nelly (also spelled nellie) means effeminate, and in gay slang it describes a man whose gayness shows: the light voice, the expressive hands, the walk, the gasp. "He's a bit nelly" is about manner, not about who he sleeps with or what he does in bed. As a noun, a nelly is an effeminate gay man, close to a queen.

It can be catty or cozy depending on who says it. Between friends, "don't be so nelly" is gentle teasing. In a profile that says "no nellies", it is the same old contempt for femininity that also hides behind "no fems".

Where it comes from

The source is the girl's name Nellie or Nelly, the same way gay men have long given each other women's names. That habit is very old. In 1709 the essayist Richard Steele mocked fashionable London men who called one another "Betty" and "Nelly" with effeminate airs. As a word for an effeminate man, Green's Dictionary of Slang's earliest example is a British soldier's diary from 1916, describing an officer nicknamed "Nellie" for his girlish face and swanky ways. Another theory links it to rhyming slang, Nellie Dean, a popular song, standing for queen; nobody can say for sure which came first.

The adjective nelly-assed, "effeminate", turns up in John Rechy's City of Night in 1963, in the phrase "nellyassed queen".

How it is used today

Nelly sounds a bit old-school now, more 1970s bar than Grindr chat. Younger men tend to say femme, fem or "a bit camp", but the meaning has not moved. It is still the opposite of butch and masc, and still the end of the spectrum that gets the jokes.

It is also a word many of us have taken back. Plenty of gay men call themselves nelly with pride, because the nelly boys were always the ones who could not hide, and who made it easier for everyone else to stop hiding too. Like swish, flamer and limp-wristed, it was meant to shame, and it now often comes out with a smile.

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