Eiffel Tower

English

Etymology

Calque of French tour Eiffel. Named after its architect Gustave Eiffel (1832–1923). The sexual sense is based on a comparison of the steeple shape of the high-fiving arms to the shape of the building.

Pronunciation

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Proper noun

the Eiffel Tower

  1. An iron tower built in 1889 on the Champ de Mars beside the Seine River in Paris; a global icon of France and one of the most recognizable structures in the world.
    • c. 1909, Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], “Was the World Made for Man?”, in Bernard DeVoto, editor, Letters from the Earth, New York, N.Y., Evanston, Ill.: Harper & Row, published 1962, →LCCN, pages 215–216:
      If the Eiffel Tower were now representing the world's age, the skin of paint on the pinnacle-knob at its summit would represent man's share of that age; and anybody would perceive that that skin was what the tower was built for.
    • 1927, M[ohandas] K[aramchand] Gandhi, chapter XXIII, in Mahadev Desai, transl., The Story of My Experiments with Truth: Translated from the Original in Gujarati, volume I, Ahmedabad, Gujarat: Navajivan Press, →OCLC:
      I must say a word about the Eiffel Tower. I do not know what purpose it serves today. But I then heard it greatly disparaged as well as praised. I remember that Tolstoy was the chief among those who disparaged it. He said that the Eiffel Tower was a monument of man's folly, not of his wisdom. Tobacco, he argued, was the worst of all intoxicants, inasmuch as a man addicted to it was tempted to commit crimes which a drunkard never dared to do; liquor made a man mad, but tobacco clouded his intellect and made him build castles in the air. The Eiffel Tower was one of the creations of a man under such influence.
    • 1993 April 11, Jack Schnedler, “Paris in one wild day”, in Chicago Sun-Times:
      I'm headed back down the elevator, having suppressed the impulse to buy an Eiffel Tower table lamp or pencil sharpener.
    • 1998 June 10, Jill Lieber, “Having a ball in Paris: France hosts soccer's world best”, in USA Today:
      Grandfathers decked out in bright yellow and green soccer jerseys, showing off Eiffel Towers shaved into the back of their heads.
    • 1998 July, Terrence Rogers, “City of vapor”, in American Artist, volume 62, number 672, page 28:
      Los Angeles is a city of image and imagination: a vast urban expanse filled with buildings and streets, yet relatively free of famous landmarks. There is neither an Eiffel Tower nor a Times Square, no Big Ben or Golden Gate Bridge to symbolize the complex essence of the city.

Translations

Noun

Eiffel Tower

  1. (slang, sexuality) A spit roast with the two penetrating partners high-fiving.
    • 2016 September 2, Brian Jordan Alvarez, directed by Brian Jordan Alvarez, The Gay and Wondrous Life of Caleb Gallo‎[1], episode 5, spoken by Billy, Malcolm, and Karen (Jon Ebeling, Nick Jandl, and Stephanie Koenig):
      [Billy:] I'm not gay, dude. / [Malcolm:] No, you don't seem gay, man. / [Billy:] I would be down for a little Eiffel Tower action, though. / [Karen:] Not, gross! [Billy:] Well, that's not gay. […] [Karen, being hugged by Billy and Malcolm:] Squeeze me, squeeze me. Squeezed between my two men. A little squeezin'. [kisses air] / [Billy:] Eiffel Tower? / [Karen:] Literally no, never.

Further reading

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