Awkward turtle is a slang two-handed gesture used to silently mark a moment or situation as awkward. 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 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 gesture is believed to have originally come from sign language. It is the common gesture for "turtle" and "tortoise" in Auslan.
A student journalist reported on the ubiquitousness of the awkward turtle hand gesture at the University of Pennsylvania 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 during a segment on "awkward turtle" on 10 October 2009.
In current wordless slang there is a significantly widespread trend for elaborate gestural constructs that signal an awkward silence or situation ('this is an awkward situation – let's get out of here/by recognising it we remain aloof'), epitomised by, yet not limited to, the awkward turtle gesture (which exists in a couple of distinct variations) and the awkward palm tree (which actually has its own FacebookTM page). This gesture is little more than an archly contrived in-group signalling: playful, certainly, probably ironic in intention, but in active circulation. The only way to gain a sufficient understanding of, say, the awkward turtle through the medium of a dictionary must be to see the gesture in action.[permanent dead link]
| Friendly gestures | |
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| Gestures of respect | |
| Salutes | |
| Celebratory gestures | |
| Finger-counting | |
| Obscene gestures | |
| Taunts | |
| Head motions | |
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| Related | |
