Chels

On the whole, the queer community is really good at remembering our history, from the early activists to cultural icons. However, one thing seems to slip through the net every year – Polari.

Polari is the secret, coded language used primarily by gay men from the 1930s-70s in the UK. The language offers a fascinating insight into the development of slang and the impact of multiculturalism in the UK, as well as serving as a reminder of just how dangerous it was to be queer in Britain, less than a hundred years ago.

Polari is often classed as a pidgin language, though its users tended to all have English as a common tongue, but it was designed to be incomprehensible, and seemingly innocent, to those out of the loop. While Polari was typically used by queer people and theatre performers, many terms originated from Yiddish, Romani, and Italian, which indicates overlap between these communities. It’s likely that since all three groups faced discrimination at the time, communication was more open between them.

So, what is Polari?

Polari is the name given to a lexicon of around 500 words, which seems small, but they had a big impact. Many of the terms replaced taboos as a way for queer people to communicate without straight people, especially police, from understanding. The language was born out of a need to remain concealed.

A man was an omi, a woman was a palone, and as such, a lesbian was a palone-omi and a gay man was a homy-palone, or HP. Complicated? That was the goal. Polari sorted the trustworthy from the untrustworthy – a statement that could be easily parsed by someone in the community would flummox an undercover policeman, and that was the goal.

Speaking of the police, they were Lillys – the Lilly Law, Bettys (Betty Bracelects) or rozzers. These days, people point out that it’s quite an insulting language when it comes to the police, but honestly? They’re the reason the community had to be so secretive, so it’s deserved.

There were countless terms for sex – arva, charver, mollying, and as has remained in gay slang particularly in the United States, trade. It’s likely that they had nuanced meanings, but sadly, most of the Polari speakers are no longer with us, so that nuance has been lost to time. 

As well as borrowing from other languages, Polari used backslang. This is the process by which you simply say or write a word backwards, to hide its real meaning. Your face was your ecaf, later further shortened to your eek, your nose was your esong or sedon, and your hair was your riah. If you were in the loop, you’d be flattered to hear you had a dolly eek. 

Rhyming slang was a big part of Polari, and while a lot was shared with Cockney rhyming slang, it was also subverted to create new meaning. Many of us would recognise plates as feet in Cockney rhyming slang, but we’d be less likely to rhyme it again – which is how it became used in Polari to refer to oral sex.

Despite its necessity, Polari was also fun. As a language, it was rhythmic and inventive, and very tongue in cheek. The interjection alamo indicated attraction to a person, and came from the initialism LMO! (or, Lick me out!). The problem was that the fun was catchy.

In the 1960s, the radio show Round the Horne featured characters Julian and Sandy, two characters played by gay comedians Kenneth Williams and Hugh Paddick. The characters spoke Polari. The Julian and Sandy segments were enjoyed across Britain, by gay and straight audiences alike – which became a problem. What was once secret vocabulary used by an in-group was being exposed to the general public. And while the straight audience didn’t really know what Julian or Sandy were saying, the language became familiar, and it was no longer as easy (or beneficial) to speak Polari. Luckily, in the same decade, England and Wales decriminalised homosexuality, so the language was no longer necessary.

We carry the legacy of Polari

I’m torn about the decline of Polari. On the one hand, I’m glad that progress was made, and the queer community no longer needed to be so private and secretive, but on the other, it’s a significant part of our history, a language that mostly goes unspoken. There’s a possibility that there are more words that researchers and historians have missed, or nuances that could only be parsed by speakers, and the further we get from the peak of Polari, the less likely we are to make any new discoveries.We’re lucky, though, because Polari does live on. A few Polari terms have survived, both in the gay community and in British slang. Camp and drag are the obvious ones, originating in the gay performance scene. But as well as that, the reason doing our makeup is often putting our slap on comes from Polari, as well as why clobber is clothes and naff is a bit rubbish – although many people would be surprised to learn that naff was another way of disparagingly calling something hetero. Polari also bridged the gap between languages – bringing us tat, meaning low grade, from Hindi, and scarper, from Italian scappare – and leaves a legacy of diversity and multiculturalism.