Poof

British and Australian slang for a gay or effeminate man, recorded since 1833: a sneering slur that gay men also use among themselves with affection.

Poof is the classic British and Australian word for a gay man, and for an effeminate one. It has been thrown at us for almost two hundred years, across pub tables, terraces and parliaments, and it carries a very particular British sneer: not just "gay", but soft, silly, not a real man. It sits at the mild-sounding but very hurtful end of the slur family.

Among gay men in Britain and Australia it is also a word of camp affection, used about ourselves and our friends, often in a stage whisper.

Where it comes from

Poof is surprisingly old. Green's Dictionary of Slang finds it for a gay man as early as 1833, in the records of London's Central Criminal Court, the Old Bailey, which tells you in what circumstances the word was usually written down. It turns up again in the 1850s in Britain, in Australia by the early 1900s and in the United States by the 1920s.

Nobody knows for sure where it comes from. One suggestion links it to the French pouf or pouffe, used for a low prostitute or for a bustle or backside; another to the English pouf, an 18th-century puffed-up headdress or a soft padded seat. Either way the image is the same: something plump, fussy and decorative.

Family and variants

• Poofter: the longer, Australian-born version, if anything even more common there.
• Poofish: effeminate or obviously gay, said of a man, a shirt or a cushion.
• Poofery: homosexuality, said with a curled lip, recorded from 1984.
• Poof-rorting: old British and Australian slang for beating and robbing male sex workers, recorded in 1938. It is a reminder that the word was often the warm-up to violence.

Where it still hurts

For generations of British and Australian gay men, poof was the word that marked them out long before they had words of their own. Its meaning slid easily from "gay" to "weak" and back, so any man who did not care for football could get it, and any man who was gay knew exactly what it threatened. That is why it still stings from a stranger, however silly it sounds.

Inside the community it has been softened by use. British gay men call each other poofs with the same mix of irony and affection Americans use for fag or queer, and in the right mouth it can be almost tender. In the wrong one, it is still a punch in the face.

Close relatives are fairy and homo.

Related terms