History HaveAGayOldTime / Other

* "Boomer" once meant something that was large and/or notable, or, more uncommonly, it could be a name given to boys. It was then used to refer to people born in the Baby Boomer generation. It's also a ColdWar era slang term for a submarine that launches nuclear missiles. It's also Aussie slang for a male kangaroo. Nowadays, it's commonly used by younger people as an insult against older and/or out-of-touch people, though it has roots in using the latter definition in a derogatory way.

* UsefulNotes/{{Xbox Live|Arcade}} [[http://kotaku.com/5632871/xbox-live-gamer-suspended-for-living-in-fort-gay once suspended a Fort Gay, West Virginia]] resident for putting the town's name as his profile location. That user brought it up with customer service, trying to convince them that Fort Gay is a real location, and had nothing to do with sexual orientation. Even the town's mayor tried to intervene, to no avail. Fortunately, the situation did eventually get reversed when Stephen Toulouse, the director of policy and enforcement for Xbox Live, personally intervened.

* Some years before Jackie Robinson broke the UsefulNotes/{{Baseball}} color line, there was a short-lived team in the Negro American League (NAL) called the Atlanta Black Crackers. Fast forward a few generations, to when "cracker" became a racial slur against white people.

** Likewise, the Spanish word for "egg" is "huevo". "Huevos" both means "eggs", in the plural, and is used as a slang word for "testicles" in Spanish. Actually, "eggs" is a pretty common slang term for "testicles" worldwide: witness[[note]][[GeniusBonus There's a pun in there for anyone who knows Latin]].[[/note]] ''Eier'' in German and ''beiḍān'' (which specifically means "pair of eggs") in many Arabic dialects.

* Inverted when Creator/LyndaCarter made [[https://twitter.com/RealLyndaCarter/status/1444115010079367174 a tweet]] about [[https://explore.org/fat-bear-week Fat Bear Week]]. When she first heard of it, she thought it was about the [[TheBear gay male subculture]] and [[BigBeautifulMan body]] [[FatAndProud positivity]]--likely because she's had a strong LGBTFanbase for decades--only to find out it's literally about grizzly bears gorging themselves before winter hibernation. She loved it all the same.

* "Boomer" once meant something that was large and/or notable, or, more uncommonly, it could be a name given to boys. It was then used to refer to people born in the Baby Boomer generation. It's also a ColdWar era slang term for a submarine that launches nuclear missiles. Nowadays, it's commonly used by younger people as an insult against older and/or out-of-touch people, though it has roots in using the latter definition in a derogatory way.

* The word "ace" refers to either the playing card or means "excellent" as a verb, or someone who is an expert in something, here as "excellent craftsmanship in caravan manufacture", and this is probably what ABI (Award Belmont International) meant when they launched their caravan and motorhome ranges. Nowadays, [[ScrewedByTheLawyers Ace caravan rights are held by the Swift Group in Humberside, England instead of ABI while the ABI name trades as a separate entity producing park homes, holiday homes and static caravans]]. However, The Swift Group discontinued the brand in 2008, probably unaware that the term "ace" was becoming slang for [[UsefulNotes/{{Asexuality}} asexual people]] as of TheNewTens. However, the intended ''meaning'' of "excellent" was what they aimed for when marketing these range of budget caravans from the 1970s to 2008. However, older generations probably may not get the reference, as the brand disappeared due to the recession and Swift Group making cutbacks because of it.

* Inverted when Creator/LyndaCarter made [[https://twitter.com/RealLyndaCarter/status/1444115010079367174 a tweet]] about Fat Bear Week. When she first heard of it she thought it was about the [[TheBear gay male subculture]] and [[BigBeautifulMan body]] [[FatAndProud positivity]]--likely because she's had a strong LGBTFanbase for decades--only to find out it's literally about [[https://explore.org/fat-bear-week plus-sized ursines]]. She loved it all the same.

* Other languages, German: A "Dirne" was simply a girl (and still is in dialect: cf. "Deern" and "Dirndl"). Nowadays it means a prostitute, but the word is so obsolete that it is only used semi-poetically even for that (akin to the English "harlot" and "strumpet"). "Wichsen" meant to apply shoe cream, but transfer by analogy [[ADateWithRosiePalms shifted the standard meaning completely.]] "Geil" went ping-pong. A biological term first ("wild") the meaning turned first into "horny" and by overuse it now rather means "cool, groovy" or something like that.

* A French example: The verb ''baiser'', which originally meant "to kiss," now ''only'' means "to fuck." (Confusingly, the '''noun''' ''un baiser'' still [[Film/{{Casablanca}} is just a kiss]]; the noun for "a fuck" is ''une baise''. The modern verb for "to kiss" is ''embrasser.'') Since this verb was obviously used abundantly in earlier times, it's very common to find it in old works of literature... and even old dictionaries, much to the dismay of students of French.
** This may have been deliberately invoked in ''Manga/HunterXHunter'', which actually has a character named Baise. Her power is to invoke intense sexual desire of any type she likes in any man by kissing him.
** Likewise, nowadays ''embrasser'' is usually taken as meaning "to kiss", but etymologically it means "to take in one's arms".[[note]] The English word ''embrace'' is in fact a cognate of the Old French form ''embrachier''[[/note]] Those evolutions are related, by the way, as ''embrasser'' started to take its modern meaning to make up for ''baiser'' having increasingly vulgar connotations (all of this dates back from the second half of the 19th century).
** In a different kind of evolution, the word "nyctalope" has kept its meaning of "able to see in the dark" intact… what changed, however, is that in modern French the word sounds almost identical to a phrase that means "f*ck your b*tch", making it very hard to use in a serious conversation. In the early [=20th=] century there was actually a French superhero called "Le Nyctalope"; needless to say, no one would even think of publishing a comic under that name now, unless it's a satire.

** A popular Scottish [[LetsHaveACeilidh ceilidh]] dance is called "The gay Gordons"

* In Brazil, the name Bráulio[[note]]pronounced BROW-lee-oh[[/note]] became a slang for penis after a 1995 TV spot that was part of a Ministry of Health campaign for condom use showed a man calling his penis by that name. Due to that, the campaign was taken off air and the name became less and less used as time went by (not that it was a popular name before). Many men with that name got the legal right to change it after proving it became an EmbarrassingFirstName for them.

* In Esperanto, the word ''gaja'' means "cheerful" or "merry". [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Take a wild guess where the term came from.]] [[note]]Esperanto was created in the 19th century, and thus contains relics of that era - another example would be ''knabo'', meaning "boy", from the German ''Knabe'', although modern German instead uses ''Junge'' to mean boy.[[/note]]