death grip
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Forms: form: death grips
Etymology: The masturbation sense was coined by American sex advice columnist and gay rights campaigner Dan Savage in 2003.
Senses: examples: text: The walker held with a death grip to his stick lest he drop it down the hill.
text: 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.
ref: 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:
text: 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.
ref: 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:
text: You might define obstinacy as holding on to small ideas or unworthy aims with a death-grip.
ref: 1914, Leander Sylvester Keyser, A System of General Ethics:
text: Robert with a death grip on an English saddle.
ref: 1966, Bruce Brown, director, The Endless Summer:
text: Until that night, the dynasty of the Dark Earth had held the nation in a death grip of control.
ref: 2005, Elizabeth Haydon, Elegy for a Lost Star:
glosses: An extremely tight grip.
examples: text: I gently tore the bloodied piece of paper out from her death grip.
text: The death grip of the Umbrella Ant soldiers is so tenacious that the natives often use them to suture wounds.
ref: 1940, Victor Wolfgang von Hagen, Jungle in the Clouds:
glosses: An extremely tight grip.
The grip of something dead or dying.
examples: text: The wolf held the chicken in a death grip until it stopped moving.
text: 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.
ref: 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:
text: “A thousand-hued beast pulled and dragged at my limbs, striving to suck me down to the depths with him. He held me close in a death grip.”
ref: 1961, Norma Lorre Goodrich, “Beowulf”, in The Medieval Myths, New York: The New American Library, page 27:
text: 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.
ref: 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:
glosses: An extremely tight grip.
A grip that kills.
glosses: An extremely tight grip.
A tight grip on the penis during masturbation.
examples: text: The armies came together in a death grip at the bottom of the valley.
text: [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.
ref: 1888, John L. Smith, History of the Corn Exchange Regiment, Philadelphia, Pa., page 257:
text: 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.
ref: 1914, William Stearns Davis, A Day in Old Athens: A Picture of Athenian Life:
glosses: A perilous situation or stalemate where failure or death is imminent.