Most happy, lighthearted, or brilliantly colored; the superlative form of 'gay' in its traditional sense.
From Old French 'gai,' possibly from Germanic roots. Originally meant carefree and colorful, the word shifted meaning in 20th-century English to primarily denote sexual orientation.
Gayest shows how English words dramatically change meaning—reading Victorian poetry with 'the gayest of the revelers' meant something completely different, which is why Shakespeare is sometimes accidentally hilarious to modern readers.
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