Originally, this was an
Elizabethan-era word meaning "a boy who has
sexual relations with a man". Nowadays, it is rarely-used
slang for a
gunman. You may be thinking that's a mighty wide gap between
original meaning and
modern usage, and you'd be right. The newer meaning came about because
mystery writer
Dashiell Hammett, while writing his
hard-boiled crime classic "
The Maltese Falcon", was trying to refer to
Wilmer, the cheap
thug employed by
Kaspar Gutman, as a
homosexual. He figured his
publisher would
balk at actually using the word "homosexual" or any associated slang terms, so he used "
gunsel" instead, assuming that most people would not know the true meaning of the word. As it turned out, "gunsel" was quickly adopted, both by the public and by the
underworld, as one of
the slang terms for "
gun-toting gangster". It's a good thing those
gun-toting
gangsters didn't know what Hammett
really meant...