The Gay Hussar: The Origins and Spread of Buserant in the Danube Region

This papers examines how the word Buserant ‘gay’ spread in the languages of the Danube region. Further, it hypothesises in what contact situations borrowing occurred. In this, it presents a case study illustrating lexical borrowing in the proposed Danubian Sprachbund. According to the study’s findings Italian road workers introduced Buserant in Viennese German from where it spread through army service and/or travellers in taverns of Austria Hungary. The borrowing appears to be restricted to the languages of Austria-Hungary and excludes Yiddish, which can be explained by the relative isolation of Yiddish-speaking communities by the mid-nineteenth century.