noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1. 1
   The practice of American police departments extorting bribes from gay bars, especially in the 1950s and 60s, in return for not raiding them; such a bribe. historical, uncountable

   "Every one of the bars that testified against the police department during the gayola inquiry was shut down."

Example

More examples

"Every one of the bars that testified against the police department during the gayola inquiry was shut down."

Etymology

From gay + -ola.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.