Limp-wristed
Effeminate, weak, and by implication gay, from the stereotype of the gay man's loose, drooping wrist; American slang since the early 1940s.
Limp-wristed means effeminate, weak, and by implication gay. The picture is a hand that hangs loosely from the wrist instead of gripping firmly, the gesture every bad comedian uses when he wants to play a gay man. A limp wrist is the shorthand; a limp-wrister is the man who supposedly has one.
Like swish and flamer, it judges a man by his body language. It is not about who he sleeps with but about how his hands move, which is exactly why straight men worried about looking gay have policed their wrists for decades.
Where it comes from
The insult is American and dates from the years around the Second World War. Green's Dictionary of Slang finds limp-wristed in a Pennsylvania newspaper in 1941, in a sneer at "the limp-wristed young men" who ran art galleries. Limp wrist as a noun follows: in 1943 the columnist Walter Winchell wrote about "the limp wrist set", meaning the gay world, and by 1953 he was reporting that a famous New York nightclub "bars limp-wristers".
Green's suggests the image draws on an older idea of the "limp wrist of refinement", the languid hand of the overcultured gentleman. From there it was a short step to the drooping wrist of the stage pansy.
How it is used today
Limp-wristed has drifted into politics. Green's records it for a weakling or a social liberal, so a politician can be accused of a limp-wristed foreign policy without anyone saying the word gay out loud. The gay subtext is still there, and most of us hear it.
The gesture itself is a classic of homophobic mimicry, along with the lisp. Among ourselves, the limp wrist has been turned into camp: a deliberately floppy hand, raised at the right moment, is a whole sentence of irony.
Close relatives
- Light in the loafers: the same idea, but about the feet.
- Swish: the hips and the walk.
- Nelly: effeminate in general, a bit fussy.
- Sissy: the umbrella insult for a man who is not "manly" enough.
The limp wrist imitation is still one of the quickest ways to tell a room what you think of gay men. If someone does it while telling a story about us, believe him.
Related terms
Sources 2
- Green, Jonathon. "limp-wristed, adj." Green's Dictionary of Slang, online edition. https://greensdictofslang.com/entry/uep337q
- Green, Jonathon. "limp wrist, n." Green's Dictionary of Slang, online edition. https://greensdictofslang.com/entry/utxe7vq