Faggot
Faggot derives through the Old French fagot from the Latin facus ("bundle") (see also fasces), coming into Middle English on or around the 13th century as a reference to a bundle of sticks or branches meant for firewood. It has also been used on occasion to refer to wood for funeral pyres or a burning at the stake.
- What fool hath added water to the sea,
- Or brought a faggot to bright-burning Troy?
- —William Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus, Act II, scene III
The word has other meanings in modern English:
- A faggot in metallurgy refers to a bundle of iron pieces destined to be worked into bars by hammering or rolling at a high enough temperature to fuse them together.
- A faggot in Newfoundland is a pile of half-dried codfish.
- A faggot in the United Kingdom is a dish of chopped meat and herbs rolled into a ball and fried.
- Faggot is a pejorative slang term used to refer to a gay man.
- Faggots is a novel by Larry Kramer
- A faggot is an archaic unit of measurement.
- "Fagot" was the NATO reporting name for the Soviet Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 fighter.
- "Fagotto" is the Italian word for bassoon, named so because early versions of the instrument looked like a bundle of sticks.
The term is not to be confused with fagott, a woodwind instrument.
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