sissy

• IPA^(key): /ˈsɪsi/

• Audio (UK):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɪsi
• Homophone: cissy

From sis +‎ -y.

sissy (plural sissies)

1. (sometimes derogatory, colloquial) An effeminate boy or man.
2. (sometimes derogatory, colloquial) A timid, unassertive or cowardly person.
   • 1963, Robert Smith, Pro Football: The History of the Game and the Great Players, page 144:

     This was all part of football and if any man was such a sissy he could not stand it, then he had better seek the sidelines.

3. (BDSM) A male crossdresser who adopts feminine behaviours.
   • 2018, Paul Zante, Sissy Dreams: Motel Sissy, page 4:

     I realised I still held my normal male clothes and dropped them to the floor under the desk, out of the way. […] Would it hurt? Yes, I knew it would from watching videos of sissies being spanked by their dominant mistresses.

4. (colloquial) Sister; often used as a term of address

   Coordinate term: bubby

   • 2008, Rita T. Kohn, William Lynwood Montell, Always a People: Oral Histories of Contemporary Woodland Indians:

     Her seven-year-old brother Justin sat on my lap beside her casket. I explained to him why we were staying with his sissy. He wouldn't leave; he stayed, too. He kissed her, touched her hand, told her he would miss her.

• cissy

• (effeminate man or boy): See Thesaurus:effeminate man, milksop, and Thesaurus:homosexual person
• (timid or cowardly person): See Thesaurus:coward
• (sister): sis

• non-sissy
• unsissy

sissy (comparative sissier, superlative sissiest)

1. (derogatory) Effeminate.
   • 1976 September, Saul Bellow, Humboldt’s Gift, New York, N.Y.: Avon Books, →ISBN, page 26:

     Frontiersmen were never afraid of poetry. It was Big Business with its fear of femininity, it was the eunuchoid clergy capitulating to vulgar masculinity that made religion and art sissy things.

   • 2000, Jeffery Deaver, Manhattan Is My Beat, revised edition, Bantam Books, →ISBN, page 173:

     […] she’d decided the wrapping paper was too feminine. It had a viney pattern that wasn’t anything sissier than you’d see in the old Arabian Nights illustrations. But Richard might think they were flowers.

2. (derogatory) Cowardly.

Likely onomatopoetic, perhaps related to French pipi (“urine”). Compare piss; wee-wee.

sissy (uncountable)

1. (childish, colloquial) Urination; urine.
   • 1997, Clark Moustakas, Relationship Play Therapy, →ISBN, page 160:

     She has to make. She has to make sissy.

sissy (third-person singular simple present sissies, present participle sissying, simple past and past participle sissied)

1. (childish, colloquial) To urinate.
   • 1979, Rhea Kohan, Save Me a Seat, →ISBN, page 25:

     Joan recognized her as the girl whose son had sissied on her pants. She was still dabbing at her pantleg with a damp paper towel.

Clipping of sissygasm.

sissy (third-person singular simple present sissies, present participle sissying, simple past and past participle sissied)

1. (intransitive, slang, vulgar, rare) To sissygasm (reach orgasm solely by penetration of the anus).