If a man dresses as a woman it is sometimes called 'drag' but is it drag if a woman dresses as a man, and where is this word from?

baldricksmum

According to this site http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-dra1.htm it originates from long skirts dragging on the ground, and has more recently come to be accepted as a term for cross dressing of both genders. Nov 25 07, 7:54 AM

zbeckabee

Drag in its broadest sense means a costume or outfit that carries symbolic significance, but usually refers to the clothing associated with one gender role when worn by a person of the other gender. Wearers of drag in this sense are divided into drag kings and drag queens, depending on the gender of the clothing adopted. The term originated either in gay or theatre slang in the 1870s, where the official long-established theatre term for "cross-dressing" on-stage was travesti (French, "cross-dressed," giving rise to "travesty" which took on further connotations as a genre of critical vocabulary). The term "drag" may have been given a wider circulation in Polari, a gay street argot in England in the early part of the 20th century. Unlike "threads," "drag" never simply meant "clothes." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drag_%28clothing%29 Nov 25 07, 12:37 PM