h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The weight of evidence seems to favour "wreaked"....especially when used with vengance.
"Henry, thus slighted by the Dauphin wreaked a terrible vengance"

Ah, good one, that's some heavy evidence in my favor!

Now, all I need is some pseudo-Shakespearian quotations, and such like. Fortunately, 'wroke' is good for rhymes.

Oh, DJ, you just stepped into my path! I was, of course, referring to Spiny's 'broke'.

I really should've known this as it appears in 'The Faerie Queene' and 'Troilus and Criseyde': 'wroke' and 'wroken' are both past participles of 'wreak', albeit obsolete ones.

As you say, Kaeori, it's excellent for rhymes and almost always appears at the end of a line as a result This bit of pseudo-Shakespeare comes from 'Confessio Amantis' by Chaucer's friend John Gower:

A vois was herd, whan that they felle,
Which seide, "O dampned man to helle,
Lo, thus hath god the sclaundre wroke
That thou ayein Constance hast spoke:
Beknow the sothe er that thou dye."
And he told out his felonie,

Er, don't tell me, I know the song, it's on the tip of my tongue...

Where does the usage of the word "camp" meaning effeminate come form?

Perchance from what large groups of men, isolated in a (military) camp are said to get up to.
Singing, drinking and barbequeing that is

It's a Polari term (language that was used in the theatre & circus, but not written down until very recently, eg "How bona to vada your eek")Popularised in England by the gay characters Julian & Sandy in "Round the Horne" in the 60s, which is about when gays were starting to come out. But it's much earlier than mid 20th century as a couple of men were prosecuted in London in 1870 for "campish undertakings".

I did find this possibility:
"Camp, Walter Chauncey. 1859-1925.
American football coach and promoter who developed many of the sport's basic rules."
but it seems farfetched.

Also perhaps from rhyming slang "camping tent" ? Nah...

Sorry, I don't get the connection with Christmas.

No, your Camp would have been only 11 years old in 1870 and I doubt he was THAT precocious

K, the full phrase is "Camp as a Christmas fairy"

Maybe its a reference to Scouts Camp..(all boys together?) Or possibly its an acronym...

Hmmm ..never heard (or at least never understood) camp in that context before. Here in North Am, the word was used in the mid to late sixties to mean outrageously kitsch and disposable. To my ears 'campy' always meant like temporary/insubstantial/flashy and I'd get a subliminal image of a battered Coleman camp stove and a gawdy coloured pup tent (being as they are the temporary, insubstantial, flashy substitutes for real housing and real cookers). It was applied to experimental theatre and art of the period which had no apparent lasting value, but was 'happening', however briefly. At the time Warhol's Soup Can Labels were considered marginally camp by severe critics. His long forgotten imitators were pure camp.
I shall henceforth be more discerning, in the unlikely event that an occassion should arise, when I might want to call something 'campy'.
~jwf~

I've seen this one before - possibly on this very thread. It's supposed to be a Polari acronym - Known As Male Prostitute - so both Wand'rin Star and Argon0 would be right .

I hope it's wrong though: I like the idea of it being from rhyming slang. Does anyone want to come up with a plausible justification for Camptown races being the source?

I don't think it was an acronym -too early. But there's a lot of rhyming slang in Polari. So perhaps it's "camp tent" for "bent"?

Another varient is

"as camp as a row of tent's"

The late and very great Stephen Foster, father of 'popular' music, wrote Camptown Races (and dozens of others we'd all recognise enough to sing along) based on his white-trash lifestyle of living and working and drinking among newly freed blacks in post-Civil War America (c1865-1880). Mostly in Texas and points west.
'Camptown' would have been any temporary tented community where itinerant blacks would live near construction projects like railroads or seasonal farming operations.
Foster died drunk and hungover in Harlem, falling and banging his head on a porcelain sink. He was white.
peace
~jwf~

Oh ..the tents were Army surplus ..after the war ..and proved handy for the westward expansion.