Not Waving but Drowning Not Waving but Drowning "Not Waving but Drowning" is a poem by the British poet Stevie Smith. It was published in 1957 as part of a collection of the same title. The most famous of Smith's poems, it gives an account of a drowned man whose distressed thrashing in the water had been mistaken for waving. The poem was accompanied by one of Smith's drawings, as was common in her work. The poem's personal significance has been the topic of several pieces of literary criticism because Smith was treated for psychological problems. She contemplated suicide at the age of eight
Hand-waving mock-antiquarian construction is "waving of [the] hands". Superlative constructions such as "vigorous hand-waving", "waved their hand[s] furiously", "lots of waving of hands", etc., are used to imply that the hand-waver lacks confidence in the information being conveyed, cannot convincingly express or defend the core of the argument being advanced. The descriptive epithet "hand-waver" has been applied to those engaging in hand-waving, but is not common. The opposite of hand-waving is sometimes called nose-following in mathematics . However it is spelled, the expression is also used the original literal meaning of gesturing in a greeting, departing, excited, or attention-seeking manner by