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].
[1892		C.G. Chaddock [trans.] Krafft-Ebing Psychopath. Sexualis 274: Among themselves, they call themselves ‘aunts’; in Vienna ‘sisters’... .. In my own town of 30,000 inhabitants, I personally know about one hundred and twenty ‘aunts’. .. Individuals that are apparently absolutely masculine I recognize as ‘aunts’ at first sight] [Simes:DLSS].
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.
1950		Goldin et al. DAUL 20/2: Aunt. The oldest of a group of male oral copulators living together in a camp. ‘Them fags (degenerates) learned the boosting grift (shoplifting profession) from their aunt.’.
1951		D.W. Cory Homosexual in America 112: The middle-aged man still seeking a young lover is an auntie.
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.
1983		‘Gary Dayton’ Gary’s Gay Odyssey 67: ‘I can see Harvey is an aunty but play it dumb...’ [Simes:DLSS].
1995		C. Bram Father of Frankenstein 132: [H]e and Thesiger conspiring to make Pretorius as gay as a goose, a woman-hating auntie [Simes:DLSS].
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. (Aus.) a middle-aged woman.

1917		S. Lewis Innocents 168: Suddenly a downy figure [...] fluttered straight at the muzzle of the sheriff’s shot-gun. [...] ‘Oh, look out, Mother!’ wailed Father [...] ‘Look out, aunty!’ echoed Crook McKusick.
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.

5. (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.

6. see aunt n. (1)

7. see aunt n. (3)