I asked this question on AB about five years ago: How did the word fag come to mean cigarette and then was transferred to homosexuals?

Blame it on the British as the term came from them mostly.

The earliest recorded usage meaning ‘cigarette’ is from 1888, and the word appears to be referring to a meaning of the word ‘fag’ as a piece of loose-hanging material or stuff, in the way a cigarette dangles.

Here in Brit-land a fag is still a cigarette.. there's still the standing joke about making sure we don't use the word fag around Americans or it could cause misunderstanding...  the example being... it's very common to say.. *I'my dying for a fag* = we all know it means a cigarette...but it would be easy to get the wrong end of the stick if an American heard us say that yes?

So we don't use the term here for homosexuals.. we never have... we do now mostly know that Americans use the word to mean homosexual... but I've no idea why you guys chose to term what we call a cigarette something else :P

I think both have to do with the original meaning of the term fagot meaning a bundle of sticks.  

i have no idea, wasnt there when they were doing it

I don't know the origin of fag for cigarette but since you roll one, I think it being a bundle of something makes sense.
As for why it went to fag in America, the faggot idea may be true, as although most Brits would not use fag for a gay person only for a cigarette, they will use faggot for a gay person.

I wonder if bumming a fag was heard by an American and they took it the wrong way, when it just means asking for a cigarette when you have none. Then of course you also have "smoking the butt"... yeah no explanation gets clearer does it? O_o

I remember seeing a programme about fundamentalist Christian group or cult in America who held signs up saying We hate fags, in the UK that would be an antismoking campaign, that is the difference in meaning between the UK and America. This post was edited by Pepper Pot at May 5, 2017 6:35 AM MDT

Faggot (homosexual) comes from faggot (bundle of wood) plus, I suppose, the notion of rubbing 2 sticks together in order to start a fire.

Fag (cigarette butt) comes from 'loose piece of cloth'

I like the descriptions here:
http://etymonline.com/index.php?term=fag&allowed_in_frame=0 This post was edited by JakobA the unAmerican. at May 5, 2017 11:52 AM MDT