I posted a little quiz in a status update. Here are the answers, and thanks for looking.

Original question: A little game – can you name two of the ways in which W. S. Gilbert (as in Gilbert and Sullivan fame) changed and contributed to everyday English? One is a two-word expression he coined, and the other has a definite Gay connection!

Answer one: Two word expression = "hardly ever." It all has to do with seasickness. In H.M.S. Pinafore, the chorus of sailors takes umbrage at the captain's assertion that he never gets it.

CAPTAIN

And I'm never, never sick at sea.

SAILORS

What, never?

CAPTAIN

No, never!

SAILORS

What? Never..?

CAPTAIN

Well, hardly ever.

SAILORS

He's hardly ever sick at sea!

Then, give three cheers

And one cheer more

For the hearty captain of the Pinafore!

That expression, and way of thinking, where we quantify 'never' into 'hardly ever' did not exist until Gilbert and Sullivan had a huge hit with this operetta. Now it's part of our everyday speech.

Answer two: Gay connection = "queer." The slag use of queer to mean Gay person is all on Gilbert's shoulders. None of the dictionaries before about 1900 have any Gay connection to the word at all – mostly it was slag for counterfeit money, or a generally offbeat person.[1]

But Gilbert used this adjective to do a send up of Oscar Wilde on stage. In 1885 everyone knew the up-and-coming poet and his advocacy of 'art for art's sake;' many joked, but few actually knew he was Gay. Gilbert had his Wilde-based character, "Bunthorne (a fleshy poet)," sing this on stage:

BUNTHORNE

Then a sentimental passion of a vegetable fashion

must excite your languid spleen,

An attachment a la Plato for a bashful young potato,

or a not-too-French French bean!

Though the Philistines may jostle, you will rank as an apostle

In the high aesthetic band,

If you walk down Piccadilly with a poppy or a lily

in your medieval hand.

And ev'ryone will say,

As you walk your flow'ry way,

This show was another huge hit, and soon playing in every corner of the English-speaking world. Seven years later when Wilde was imprisoned for being Gay, 'queer' was intimately associated with him, and by projection, with all Gay people. The lyrics were altered by Gilbert after that life-ruing scandal, and productions were forced to use 'pure young man' if they wished for permission to stage the work. After WWI, slag dictionaries began to list the word as a derogatory term for same-sex-loving people, and it was all due to Gilbert.

[1] See the awesome slang guide The Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, from 1823: http://books.google.com.au/books?id=bJc-AAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=snippet&q=queer&f=false