Of a dual-meaning word and a generation gap

Hey again guys! I know its been a while since my last post, and I miss my blog, so I promise I'll start updating again. :)
Here's another essay I wrote for English. Our assignment was to write about a word that means different things to different people, and the first thing I thought of was "faggot," for reasons you'll know soon.
Have fun!

I was five years old when I first heard the word “faggot.” My grandpa was talking about something—I was young, and not very interested in adult conversations, so I can’t recall exactly what he was talking about. What I do remember, however, is the look on my mother’s face when he said it. Whatever it meant, it had to be terrible to make my mom so angry. She was fuming, and I heard her whisper harshly to him, presumably telling him not to say such things around me. Grandpa, completely nonplussed and effervescently jocular, wondered aloud why my mom was so furious with him. This short moment completely changed my perception of language. At this early age, I learned that words can have more than one meaning.
Originally, the word faggot, taken from the Middle English word fagge, meaning flap, was the name given to a bundle of firewood. Men would go out into the woods with ropes and bands, or “fags,” gather up kindling, and tie it all together into a “faggot.” Later, the word would be widely used in Europe in association with tobacco, as it became slang for cigarette. This is the meaning my grandfather had grown up with, and what he would always associate it with.
During the Holocaust, however, “faggot” took on a more sinister meaning. Homosexuals were some of the most oppressed victims of the Nazi regime, and suffered through some of the worst torture that German concentration camps had housed. When it came to their extermination, they were spared no mercy. Gay men and women were stripped of their prison uniforms, tied together in groups, doused with gasoline and burned at the hands of Nazi guards. They were literally bundled into a faggot. Thus began its use as a derogatory term for homosexuality.
None of these darker connotations of the word had been revealed to my grandpa before. He had grown up in rural Ireland, moved to Brooklyn, and surrounded himself with Irish friends who had done the same thing. In his eyes, a “chip” was a French fry, “bloody” was a curse, and a “faggot” was still a cigarette. He never knew anything outside of his Irishness, until his children revealed American culture to him. It was up to my mom and her siblings to teach him everything they learned from their peers in school, who were more well-versed in American swear words and slang.
Which brings us back to my first exposure to the word. When I first heard someone say the word “faggot,” I was completely perplexed. My mother was aghast, my grandfather was on the defensive, and I was at a loss to believe either of them. My dilemma worsened when I looked up the word in a dictionary; every tome I utilized listed at least four definitions for it, ranging from exhaustion to frayed rope. Having read every dictionary entry I could find for the word, I now know that a fag can be a leather band or a cigarette, depending on where you are; to fag out is to be tired; kindling is often wrapped up into faggots; and this multifaceted word, when used in certain contexts, can hurt and insult people.
Not all slurs are like this one. For example, the n-word, derived from the Spanish word for black, was created with the sole purpose of dehumanizing people of African descent. But many words, like faggot, have many more meanings than most people recognize. It is this knowledge, and knowing that culture contributes most of our perception of language, that helps people like me form a well rounded view of the world and the English language. Without fully understanding a word’s history, we cannot hope to successfully communicate with people around the world.

The ending's kinda terrible, but I hope the essay as a whole made you think; that is, after all, my goal.
Until we meet again, I bid thee adieu!