Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (US gay, also aunty, tante) an ageing male homosexual.

[1728		J. Dalton Narrative of Street-Robberies 32: This Susan Haws told Dalton, if he would go with him to his Aunt Wittles [...] he would treat him: Accordingly Dalton consented, and coming there, he found this Aunt Wittle was a Man, and no Doubt a Molly. [Ibid.] 38: There is a Club of these Mollies [...] The Stewards are Miss Fanny Knight, and Aunt England].
1910		I.L. Pavia Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen No. 11 41: Aunt (Tante) = ein ganz alter, in seinem Benehmen etwas weibsischer urning [GS].
1919		Transcript Foster Inq. in L.R. Murphy Perverts by Official Order (1989) 53: He might have used the terms ‘Auntie Green’ or ‘Auntie Kent,’ admitted Hoage.
c.1925		R. McAlmon Lodging House (1963) 85: Files felt uncomfortable because of the other man’s obvious auntielike manner.
1928		E. Milton To Kiss the Crocodile 141: He was clad in a wrapper. ‘Come to your auntie Clara,’ said this person.
1932		‘R. Scully’ Scarlet Pansy 147: Fairies with their sailors or marines or rough trade; tante’s (aunties) with their good looking clerks or chorus molls. [Ibid.] 219: ‘Young?’ gurgled an old aunty.
1941		F. Sargeson ‘That Summer’ in Coll. Stories (1965) 175: He was a tonk all right, just a real old auntie.
1949		‘Swasarnt Nerf’ Gaedicker’s Sodom-on-the-Hudson 20: Aunties who go around groping and fellating anyone who’ll let them.
1961		‘Lou Rand’ Gay Detective (2003) 96: That’s mostly for the rich old aunties and bats like that.
1965		L. Bruce How to Talk Dirty 34: He didn’t swish but he was sort of like an old auntie.
1972		E. Newton Mother Camp 27: The segregation is roughly by decades: ‘chickens’ under twenty; [...] and ‘aunties,’ forty and over.
1978		Maledicta II:1+2 (Summer/Winter) 120: ‘Get you, Mary’ (the use of proper names in camp slang), and studies of poufs and dykes and aunties and chickens and flashers and leather queens and other denizens of the sexual subcultures.
1997–2002		Alt. Eng. Dict. 🌐 aunty (noun) likable older gay male, not necessarily effeminate.
2005		A. Lovejoy Acid Alex 166: An ou might be a nongie in the mang without being an auntie or a pop because he might smokkel for the brothers of sondaf to make his bene sterk – but on the outside he would be sondop and marrobaan to make a way.
2010		W. Ings ‘Trolling the Beat to Working the Soob’ in Int’l Jrnl Lexicog. 23:1 70: An auntie was often a derogatory term for an older homosexual man who was interested in sex and whose approach to life was conservative.
2019		P. Baker Fabulosa 289/1: auntie an older gay man.

2. an ageing female, occas. male, prostitute.

1949		Monteleone Criminal Sl. (rev. edn).
1986–7		Maledicta IX 148: The compilers ought to have looked farther afield and found: [...] auntie (elderly pro).
1989–2003		R.O. Scott Gay Sl. Dict. 🌐 auntie: [...] 2. old male prostitute.

3. a male ‘madam’.

1892		G.C. Chaddock (trans.) in Krafft-Ebing Psychopathia Sexualis 416: The most horrible of active pederasts is made up of the ‘aunts’ – i.e., the souteneurs of (male) prostitutes.
1965		A. James America’s Homosexual Underground 45: I had always known what I’d do [...] I’d go to one of the old aunties, the male madams around town.

4. (S.Afr.) a shebeen queen, owner of an illegal drinking club.

1973		M. Dikobe Marabi Dance 77: An ‘auntie’ was heard pleading with a customer who pretended to be asleep.
1987		(con. 1950s) G. Moloi My Life 118: The aunties used to dig holes and bury their liquor. [...] Whenever someone need a sip, she would go and kneel down and undig the hole, which was called the ‘mine,’ while one or two others would [...] watch out for the cop.

5. (Aus.) a middle-aged woman.

1999

R.G. Barrett Wind & Monkey (2013) [ebook] [F]or an auntie, she had a pretty good pair of shapely legs with a trim ankle.

6. see aunt n. (1)

7. see aunt n. (3)