ABSTRACT
Polari was not developed by omee-palones in an isolated bubble, separate from other influences. Rather, it emerged as the result of a number of converging subcultures over many decades. It is impossible to chart exactly how each linguistic item found its way from one subculture into another, and finally into Polari, but an examination of the lexicons of these historically related subcultures reveals similarities in terms of pronunciation and/or meaning (spelling is a moot issue, as these words were rarely, if ever, written down by the people who used them, and even when they were recorded on paper, it is unlikely that they became standardised, except by professional lexicographers who imposed their own spelling standards on them).
