When the word faggot appeared in English in the fourteenth century, it simply meant bundle, specifically a bundle of sticks or twigs tied together for kindling. This original sense lies behind most of the later senses of faggot, including a culinary one: in British kitchens, a faggot is a little ball of minced pork, liver, onions, and breadcrumbs wrapped or “bundled” together with a caul, a membrane cut from a pig’s bowels. For similar reasons, in the sixteenth century, the word faggot was used as a contemptuous name for an old woman, the idea being that such women—with their bent, bony frames wrapped in a tattered shawls or cloaks—supposedly resembled a bundle of dried-out sticks (the modern counterpart, old bag, is based on the same purported resemblance). This old woman sense of faggot survived until early in the twentieth century when it then inspired homophobes to transfer the term to gay men: such men, as far as their homophobic enemies were concerned, were as worthless and feeble as they believed old women were. This explanation of how faggot came to mean gay man runs counter to a false one that has achieved wide circulation over the past decade or so: namely that gay men were called faggots because they, like bundles of sticks, were once burned. It is certainly true that homosexuals, like other “heretics,” were once burned at the stake for their supposed crimes, but considering thai faggot came to mean gay man a mere eighty years ago, it is highly unlikely that a sixteenth century punishment inspired the current gay sense of faggot.