Polari Dictionary

Below is a dictionary of Polari, the coded language used predominantly by gay men – particularly those "fiercely camp working-class queens" with "names like Fishy Francis and Diamond Lil, who put powder on their cheeks and wore colourful, feminine scarves" (Baker (2002), p. 1) – in the United Kingdom in the early to mid twentieth-century. It's adapted largely from the glossary in Paul Baker's Fabulosa! The Story of Polari, Britain's Secret Gay Language (2019) and his Fantabulosa: A Dictionary of Polari and Gay Slang (2002), both of which outline the history of Polari.

In brief, Polari had a number of ancestor, influences and sources – seventeenth-century Thieves Cant; Parlyaree (used by fairground and circus people, sex workers, mendicants and buskers); Cockney rhyming slang; Yiddish; merchant sailors' Lingua Franca; German, French and Italian; American English; drug culture slang – not to mention the Polari speaker's own creativity and inventiveness; and it was used "[b]ecause being openly homosexual was dangerous": "the need for a language that protected gay men, and at the same time acted as a kind of 'gaydar' by allowing them to recognize others, was extremely useful" (Baker (2002), p. 3).

Introducing his glossary, Baker writes:

It is unlikely that twentieth-century Polari speakers would have used or even known all of the terms listed [here]. ... [Additionally,] a Polari word will possess multiple spellings, meanings, origins and in some cases pronunciations, owing to the secretive, unstandardized, constantly changing nature of the lexicon.

Rachel P. Kreiter (A Bona Nosh (2022)) describes Polari's grammar well enough, writing, The banal elements of English, the prepositions and pronouns, are retained, and the sentence structure is the same ... .

Bona lavs

Polari, as a form of camp humour, protection and attack, is worth remembering – a gay 'language' which serves as a testament to those who lived through times very different to our own. [Baker (2002), p. 8]

The main intentions for this dictionary are to help preserve a less-well-known element of LGBTQ+ history and help members of the LGBTQ+ community connect to that history – and maybe help them camp up their language, if they fancy.

Gardy loo! Billingsgate!

However, our history isn't perfect and this is reflected in the historical record of Polari. A number of the words and phrases are misogynistic, racist and perhaps classist. They are preserved below as a reminder of how, within the LGBTQ+ community, there were – and still are – inequalities and hierarchies of oppression, which we need to continue dismantling.

Vada also

If you find this dictionary interesting, you might enjoy the Polari Bible.