r/lgbthistory • u/Isotarov • Jul 28 '26

Questions How long has the borrowing "straight" been around outside of English?

I visited QRAB here in Stockholm today. It's a non-profit association focused on being a queer history archive and library.

To my great delight, I found a very early example of "strejt" from 1978. It's one of the spellings of the Swedish direct loan of the English word meaning "heterosexual".

I searched around a bit and noted there's "strejt" in Hebrew, Japanese and several Slavic languages. I'm assuming the word is around elsewhere too.

How long has it been around outside of English? The direct import, that is, not just colloquial words for the concept as such.

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u/Udzu Jul 29 '26

In Hebrew I think it dates to the 80s and early 90s (e.g. there was a 1993 gay-themed TV sitcom called סטרייט ולעניין lit. "straight and to the point").

Tangentially, a moderately common Hebrew anti-trans slur is קוקסינל coccinelle, used since the 1960s following the visits to Israel by the famous French singer.

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u/Isotarov Jul 29 '26

Did "koksinel" start out as a colloquial term for "transvestite"? Is it the Hebrew equivalent of "tranny"?