death grip

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

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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:

     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.

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

• graphited, heptagrid