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Faggot is a very old word in English, deriving through the French fagot from the Latin facus, meaning a bundle.
A faggot is a bundle of sticks or branches, usually bound together. It is most commonly used in reference to wood intended for use as firewood.
In metallurgy, faggot 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.
It has been frequently said that it derives from faggot in the sense of a bundle of sticks, because homosexual men were burned at the stake for sodomy and faggots were used as kindling.
The more likely derivation is that faggot was originally a derogatory term for street prostitutes, female and male, because they were associated with "the gutter," where "faggot-ends" of meat were thrown by butchers.
Faggot has historically been one of the most offensive terms that could be addressed to an American male, but the more casual use of the word in recent years has robbed it of some of its force.
Faggot or fag, in modern American, Canadian and Australian English usage, is a generally pejorative term for a gay or effeminate man. Its use has spread to varying extents elsewhere in the English-speaking world.
The word faggot is occasionally used in parts of Britain to denote a silly or foolish person, presumably as an extension of its earlier association with old women.
The use of fag and faggot to mean homosexual have become understood as an Americanism in British English, primarily due to their use in films and television series imported from the United States.
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