Awkward turtle is a slang two-handed

gesture A gesture is a form of non-verbal communication or non-vocal communication in which visible bodily actions communicate particular messages, either in place of, or in conjunction with, speech. Gestures include movement of the hands, face, or ot ...

used to silently mark a moment or situation as awkward. A number of spinoff hand gestures akin to the awkward turtle have since arisen (like the awkward palm tree, which even has its own

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin M ...

page; awkward bell; awkward gong; awkward antlers; awkward tent; awkward turkey; and awkward turtle makes babies). The gesture is likely used in most cases playfully and ironically. Some have remarked that giving the gesture is a sort of celebration of social discomfort. The gesture is believed to have originally come from

sign language Sign languages (also known as signed languages) are languages that use the visual-manual modality to convey meaning, instead of spoken words. Sign languages are expressed through manual articulation in combination with non-manual markers. Sign l ...

. It's the common gesture for "turtle" and "tortoise" in Auslan, and may also be in

American Sign Language American Sign Language (ASL) is a natural language that serves as the predominant sign language of Deaf communities in the United States of America and most of Anglophone Canadians, Anglophone Canada. ASL is a complete and organized visual lang ...

as the gesture for "sea turtle"—though people have disputed this, claiming it is actually the ASL sign for "platypus". The awkward turtle is gestured by placing one hand flat atop the other with both palms facing down, thumbs stuck out to the sides and rotating to look like flippers. The term "awkward turtle" has transcended the gesture and is sometimes just stated, without the gesture.

Example usages

History

A student journalist reported on the ubiquitousness of the awkward turtle hand gesture at the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...

on 3 February 2006. By 2008, Facebook reportedly had more than 500 "awkward turtle" groups, the largest of which had more than 27,000 members. " A Way with Words", a public radio program about language, cited it as slang from

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California St ...

during a segment on "awkward turtle" on 10 October 2009.

References

{{Gestures Hand gestures