Faggot (disambiguation)

Faggot derives through the Old French fagot from the Latin facus ("bundle") (see also fasces), coming into Middle English on or around the 13th century as a reference to a bundle of sticks or branches meant for firewood. It has also been used on occasion to refer to wood for funeral pyres or a burning at the stake.

What fool hath added water to the sea,

Or brought a faggot to bright-burning Troy?

—William Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus, Act II, scene III

The word has other meanings in modern English:

• A faggot in metallurgy refers to a bundle of iron pieces destined to be worked into bars by hammering or rolling at a high enough temperature to fuse them together.
• A faggot in Newfoundland is a pile of half-dried codfish.
• A faggot in the United Kingdom is a dish of chopped meat and herbs rolled into a ball and fried.
• Faggot is a pejorative slang term used to refer to a gay man.

The derivation of this word may relate more closely to the German word "vogel" or bird and the Yiddish word Vogella, "little bird", used as slang for a homosexual male. The Spanish word "pajaro" also meaning a bird, is similarly used as a derisive term for a homosexual.

• Faggots is a novel by Larry Kramer
• A faggot is an archaic unit of measurement.
• "Fagot" was the NATO reporting name for the Soviet Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 fighter.
• "Fagotto" is the Italian word for bassoon, named so because early versions of the instrument looked like a bundle of sticks.

The term is not to be confused with fagott, a woodwind instrument.

See also

• Fag