Polari: How Gay Men in Britain Talked in Plain Sight

I’d begin with a terrible pair of trousers. Linguist Paul Baker uses them to explain Polari: “vada the naff strides on the omee ajax.” His translation is “look at the awful trousers on the man nearby.” There’s the appeal in one sentence. Someone gets to be deliciously rude, and the man in the trousers might never know.

Polari is a British slang, or cant, associated especially with gay men between the 1920s and 1960s. English holds the sentence together. Borrowed words do the discreet work: pointing out a handsome stranger, sharing gossip or recognizing another gay man. Italian, Romani and Yiddish are among the ingredients.

That privacy mattered when sex between men was criminalized. Yet reducing Polari to a survival tool misses much of its pleasure. In Baker’s history for Lancaster University, the camp names and jokes belong beside the fear of arrest. These people had a sense of humor. They also had something to lose.

Jump to: Meaning · Origins · 25-word dictionary · Reading and listening · Common questions

What Is Polari?

You’ll often see it called a secret gay language. That description gets you started, though “slang” is more precise. Etymologist Michael Quinion explains at World Wide Words that Polari generally uses English grammar. Look again at those trousers. “The” and “on the” remain ordinary English; the revealing vocabulary changes.

The name comes from Italian parlare, meaning to speak. It can mean talk, and speakers used it as a verb too. Spelling was flexible: Palari, Palare and Parlyaree all appear in its history. Nobody handed speakers a style guide.

Baker’s Fabulosa project at Lancaster University records roughly 500 terms. Most speakers would have known a core of around 20. I find that distinction useful. A short exchange could establish recognition without either person knowing an entire dictionary.

Polari’s Origins: Theaters, Fairgrounds and Ports

Ask where Polari began and the trail branches. One predecessor was Parlyaree, spoken by traveling entertainers, buskers, market traders and beggars. Fabulosa traces contributions from French, rhyming slang, American air force slang and thieves’ cant. Quinion adds Italian, Romani, Shelta and Yiddish to the picture.

Some possible routes are easier to imagine than to prove. Italian performers and peddlers may have brought words into Britain during the early 19th century. Quinion also discusses Mediterranean Lingua Franca, a trading language with substantial Italian vocabulary. Sailors who later worked in entertainment could have carried it ashore. These remain explanations under consideration, rather than a settled family tree.

Then there is backslang: words turned around. Quinion offers riah, meaning hair, as a possible example. The BBC’s Polari glossary gives both eek and ecaf for face. You can see why the connections appeal. A convincing resemblance, however, cannot supply a missing historical record.

Who Used Polari, and What Did It Offer Them?

Gay men were central to Polari’s life, but they weren’t its only speakers. Fabulosa also names lesbians, female impersonators, theater workers and sex workers. The merchant navy had “sea queens,” gay men whose work took them to sea. Straight theater people used Polari as well.

For a gay man, a small word could test the waters. Baker describes dropping bona or palone into conversation to see whether someone understood. You could hint without announcing yourself to the whole room. With arrest, blackmail and violence among the risks, discretion had practical value.

It offered no guarantee. A hostile listener might know the vocabulary too. And secrecy alone cannot explain all those affectionate names, insults and elaborate greetings. I’d read Polari as social life happening under pressure: friendship, desire and a sharp tongue, with danger close enough to matter.

Julian and Sandy Bring Polari to ‘Round the Horne’

The private vocabulary eventually reached the family radio. On the BBC’s Round the Horne, Hugh Paddick played Julian and Kenneth Williams played Sandy. Barry Took and Marty Feldman created the series, which ran from 1965 to 1968. The BBC puts its audience at about 15 million.

Kenneth Horne would encounter the pair operating some unlikely business. Their greetings came with double meanings and variations on “how bona to vada your eek.” A great deal passed the BBC’s censors. Quinion reports that Williams and Paddick also spoke Polari offstage, so the vocabulary wasn’t simply a scriptwriter’s invention.

Fifteen million listeners make an awkward audience for a secret. The sketches gave Polari extraordinary exposure while making it easier for outsiders to understand. Baker identifies that familiarity as one reason its use declined.

What Changed After the Sexual Offences Act 1967?

Radio was one part of the story. Law and gay politics were changing too, though the legal change needs careful wording.

The Sexual Offences Act 1967 partially decriminalized sex between men in England and Wales. It covered two consenting men aged 21 or over, in private. The act’s definition of privacy excluded public toilets and situations where more than two people were present. Other offenses remained. Scotland’s reform followed in 1980; Northern Ireland’s came in 1982.

That is a considerably narrower change than saying homosexuality became legal across Britain in 1967. Keeping the limits visible helps explain why privacy still mattered.

Meanwhile, some gay liberation activists wanted to leave Polari behind. Baker describes criticism of its campness and secrecy in the 1970s magazine Lunch. American gay styles and slang attracted interest. For some people, the old vocabulary carried associations they were trying to escape.

By 2000, roughly half the respondents in Baker’s survey of about 800 gay men had never heard of Polari. That tells us something about his respondents, rather than every gay man. Still, it is a striking result for words once heard by millions on the BBC.

A Polari Bible, an Exhibition and a Revival

Disappearing from everyday conversation did not mean disappearing altogether. Baker documented the vocabulary in Polari: The Lost Language of Gay Men and Fantabulosa: A Dictionary of Polari and Gay Slang. His 2019 Fabulosa! The Story of Polari, Britain’s Secret Gay Language became a TLS Book of the Year.

Artists and performers have taken the words into some unexpected settings. The following examples show the range, from a gallery reading to Parliament’s archives.

My favorite detail in Baker’s account is the white gloves at the 2012 Bible reading. Even handling the book became part of the performance. Five years later, the Cambridge evensong called God “the Duchess.” The college’s subsequent regret shows how readily this vocabulary could still unsettle a room.

25 Polari Words and Their Meanings

Here is a starter dictionary, drawn from Fabulosa, World Wide Words and Baker’s examples. Spellings and meanings vary between speakers. For a larger collection, try Baker’s Fantabulosa; this list is enough to begin following the examples in this article.

Two familiar entries deserve a closer look. Naff means tacky or tasteless, but its origin remains disputed. Quinion suggests a connection with naph, a Polari word meaning bad. He offers that as a possibility. Popular acronym explanations should not be treated as established history either.

Zhoosh, also written zhuzh, has a similar problem. Merriam-Webster locates its earliest records in Polari and dates the verb to 1970. The dictionary describes proposed Yiddish and Romani origins as unsupported. We can place the word in Polari without pretending to know every earlier step.

You may recognize camp, butch, drag or trade too. Their appearance in Polari doesn’t make Polari their inventor. Borrowing was part of the vocabulary’s character.

How to Read and Hear Polari

Return to the trousers before tackling a long wordlist. Vada gives you the action: look. Strides supplies the object: trousers. Ajax tells you where the man is: nearby. Once those pieces fall into place, the insult becomes perfectly ordinary English in unfamiliar clothes.

For spoken conversation, I’d use Putting on the Dish, embedded above. Listen with the subtitles and notice which English words remain untouched. Brian Fairbairn and Karl Eccleston made the six-minute film in 2015. Its setting is 1962, but it is fiction, not a recording recovered from that year.

Resist the urge to demand one correct spelling or accent. Baker’s research documents differences between speakers, including different meanings for the same word. Follow the particular exchange you’re hearing. A dictionary helps; the speaker and setting matter as well.

Polari Among Other Queer Codes

Queer recognition could also happen without a spoken word. Our guide to the hanky code follows colored handkerchiefs associated with American leather culture. Gayety’s history of gay symbols and codes includes Oscar Wilde’s green carnation.

With Polari, the signal could arrive halfway through a sentence. That is what I’d keep alongside the glossary. These words gave people room to recognize each other, make a joke and carry on talking.

Polari Questions and Answers

What does Polari mean?

The name means talk or speech, from the Italian verb parlare. Palari, Palare and Parlyaree are among its spellings. Speakers could also use polari as a verb: to chat.

Does anyone still speak Polari?

Some older gay men and theater communities still use it, according to Lancaster University’s Fabulosa project. Revival projects keep it in circulation too. Its use is much more limited than before the late 1960s.

What does bona mean?

Bona means good. Julian and Sandy made it familiar to radio listeners through their greeting, “how bona to vada your eek.” That is roughly “how good to see your face.”

Who played Julian and Sandy?

Hugh Paddick played Julian; Kenneth Williams played Sandy. They appeared in the BBC radio comedy Round the Horne from 1965 to 1968.

Did zhuzh come from Polari?

Merriam-Webster places the earliest records of zhoosh, also spelled zhuzh, in Polari. It dates the verb to 1970. Earlier origins remain uncertain, including proposed connections with Yiddish and Romani.