Best described as a “cant”—a form of language spoken by a group and that is unintelligible to outsiders—Polari was mostly spoken by British gay men until the mid-20th century. Consisting of around 500 words, it resembles a mixture of English with Cockney rhyming slang, Italian and Yiddish. Speakers used it for secrecy, to identify each other and for camp humour.

This story is a part of our magazine—The Queer Issue.