death grip

English

Etymology

The masturbation sense was coined by American sex advice columnist and gay rights campaigner Dan Savage in 2003.

Noun

death grip (plural death grips)

1. An extremely tight grip.

   The walker held with a death grip to his stick lest he drop it down the hill.

   • 1792, “Domestic Intelligence: Dublin, Sept. 7, 1792”, in Walker's Hibernian Magazine or Compendium of Entertaining Knowledge for the Year 1792. Part II, Dublin: Printed by Joseph Walker, No. 79, Dame Street, page 287:

     Cunningham then declared […] that he was at Mr. Lyneall's, and saw Robinson snap his pistol, which did not go off; that he heard a voice from some one, saying fire! and also heard a shot, but did not know who fired; that Condron, the approver, afterwards told him he had no pistol, as he dropped it when he fired; that Condron could not help firing, as the gentleman who struggled with him held a death grip of the pistol he fired.

   • 1831 February, “Art XIV.—The Romance of History—France. By Leitch Ritche. In three volumes. 8vo. London: Edward Bull. 1831.”, in Ralph Griffiths, George Edward Griffiths, editors, The Monthly Review, volumes I (new and improved series), number II, London: G. Henderson, 2, Old Bailey, page 309:

     The mysterious bark, though rent and shattered, still held on with a death-grip to the bridge, and the starting and splinting timbers of the latter seemed to shrink and shriek with fear and agony.

   • 1914, Leander Sylvester Keyser, A System of General Ethics:

     You might define obstinacy as holding on to small ideas or unworthy aims with a death-grip.

   • 2005, Elizabeth Haydon, Elegy for a Lost Star:

     Until that night, the dynasty of the Dark Earth had held the nation in a death grip of control.

   1. The grip of something dead or dying.

      I gently tore the bloodied piece of paper out from her death grip.

      • 1940, Victor Wolfgang von Hagen, Jungle in the Clouds:

        The death grip of the Umbrella Ant soldiers is so tenacious that the natives often use them to suture wounds.

   2. A grip that kills.

      The wolf held the chicken in a death grip until it stopped moving.

      • 1912, Spencer Walpole, A History of England from the Conclusion of the Great War in 1815, revised edition, volume IV, London: Longmans, Green and Co., →OCLC, page 280:

        At the outset Mahmoud commanded Mehemet to withdraw his forces and to lay his grievances before his Sultan. He might as well have ordered the lion to loose his death-grip on the roe.

      • 1986 October 20, Boyce Rensberger, “Only 80,000 miles separate 2 stars locked in ‘death grip’ of newly found binary system”, in The Washington Post‎, page A3:

        Astronomers have discovered a double-star system in which the two members of the pair are just 80,000 miles apart — one-third the distance between Earth and the moon — and the smaller, locked into a “death grip,” zooms around the larger at the surprising rate of once every 11 minutes.

   3. (slang) A tight grip on the penis during masturbation.
2. A perilous situation or stalemate where failure or death is imminent.

   The armies came together in a death grip at the bottom of the valley.

   • 1888, John L. Smith, History of the Corn Exchange Regiment, Philadelphia, Pa., page 257:

     [O]ne Confederate in the death grip had seized the sharp edge of a huge rock, and with feet held fast in a cleft of the rock above, hung head downwards between the two.

   • 1914, William Stearns Davis, A Day in Old Athens: A Picture of Athenian Life:

     They act as skirmishers before the actual battle: and while the hoplites are in the real death-grip they harass the foe as they can, and guard the camp.

Quotations

• For quotations using this term, see Citations:death grip.

Anagrams

• graphited, heptagrid