faggot

The word 'faggot' entered English in the late 13th century from Anglo-French 'fagot', meaning a bundle of sticks. The French term likely derives from Italian 'fagotto', which is of uncertain origin but may be connected to Latin 'fasces', referring to a bound bundle of rods symbolizing authority. The derogatory slang sense for a gay man, first recorded in early 20th-century American English, is believed to originate from the earlier British public school slang where a 'faggot' was a junior boy forced to perform tasks for a senior, implying servitude and worthlessness. This pejorative usage was then metaphorically transferred, drawing on the bundle's association with something bound and burdensome, to become a severe term of abuse targeting homosexual men, a meaning that has since become its most prominent and offensive connotation.

This word is a simplex loanword from Old French. Its spelling and form have been fully Anglicized, making its internal morphemes (from its Latin and Greek ancestry) no longer directly recoverable or segmentable from the modern English spelling 'faggot'.