Bugger

Bugger has a tangled history. It traces back through Old French to a word for Bulgarians, whose medieval religious dissent was linked by accusers to heresy and, by extension, to sodomy. Over time buggery became a legal term in British and Commonwealth law for anal intercourse, and buggery statutes were used to criminalize and prosecute gay men for centuries. The word has functioned as a homophobic slur and a criminal charge, and in everyday British and Australian speech it also softened into a mild, often affectionate expletive with little sexual meaning. Understanding the term matters for LGBTQ+ history because the laws built on it shaped how many countries policed same-sex intimacy well into modern times.