Word.ws English Dictionary

friend of Dorothy

friend of Dorothy noun: a homosexual man.

Noun

friend of Dorothy (plural friends of Dorothy)

  1. (euphemistic, slang) A homosexual man.
    • He's a disco-dancing, Oscar Wilde-reading, Streisand ticket-holding friend of Dorothy, know what I'm saying?1995, Amy Heckerling, Clueless, spoken by Murray (Donald Faison)

Forms of friend of Dorothy

pluralfriends of Dorothy
alternative formDorothy's friend

Origin of friend of Dorothy

Commonly thought to refer to Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz (1939), portrayed by gay icon Judy Garland; alternatively (or additionally) it could be a reference to writer Dorothy Parker, who was friends with many gay men.

Questions about friend of Dorothy

What does friend of Dorothy mean?
Friend of Dorothy means a homosexual man.
What part of speech is friend of Dorothy?
Friend of Dorothy is a noun.
What is the plural of friend of Dorothy?
The plural of friend of Dorothy is friends of Dorothy.

Words near friend of Dorothy in the dictionary

  1. friend of Bill
  2. friend of Bill W.
  3. friend of Bill's
  4. friend of Bluey
  5. friend of court
  6. friend of Dorothy
  7. Friend of God
  8. friend of mine
  9. friend of ours
  10. friend of the court
  11. friend price

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: friend of Dorothy (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-friend of Dorothy.ogg.

Cite this entry: “friend of Dorothy.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/friend_of_dorothy. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.