The closet is an extremely evocative metaphorical location. Closet comes from close, which both in the sense “near” and “shut” goes back to Latin claudere “to shut,” also the source of recluse, someone who shuts themselves away.
To out someone, meaning to reveal that they are gay, is a shortened way of saying “to force them out of the closet”. A person who is hiding the fact that they are gay has been described as in the closet, or as a closet homosexual, since the late 1960s. This idea of privacy led to the sense of hiding a fact or keeping something secret, which goes right back to the beginning of the 17th century. The etymology book The Insect That Stole Butter? provides the following definition for “closet”:Ĭloset Although closet is now the usual word in American English for a cupboard or wardrobe, it originally referred to a small private room, such as one for study or prayer.
Let’s go through it backwards, word by word. In English, a person concealing his or her sexual identity is said to be “in the closet.” This phrase can tell us quite a bit about the experience it describes. One persistent issue in gay life in general, and in the medical treatment of LGBTQ patients more particularly, is that widespread intolerance leads people to conceal their sexual behaviors or identities, leading to incompleteness or inaccuracy in their histories and impairing the ability of their physicians to treat them.
