This word originally meant "ostentatiously and effeminately homosexual, queeny". In British and American slang dates back to the early 1900s. It is earliest recorded in Australia from 1940. In Australia it very became used to mean simply "homosexual", without the connotation of effeminancy. Camp was the preferred term used by homosexual men to refer to themselves up until the 1970s when the term gay began to oust it from this position.