Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(gay) a young boy with alluring buttocks.

1983

R. Klein Jailhouse Jargon and Street Sl. [unpub. ms.].

(US black) the sexual equivalent of a soft heart: one’s actions are dictated by sexual rather than emotional/intellectual feelings.

1969		‘Iceberg Slim’ Pimp 65: In fact, ‘Tender Dick’, it’s what you like to do best.
1973		D. Goines Street Players 19: He fell in love with a woman’s hips, and that love-joy was his downfall. Earl called it ‘having a tender dick.’.
1979		‘Iceberg Slim’ Airtight Willie and Me 62: The major handicap of his tender dick [...] had chilled his long shoe dream.

1. (orig. US) a novice, an inexperienced person.

1849		in AS XXI:3 (1946) 227/2: We saw a man in Sacramento when we were on our way here, who was a tender-foot, or rawheel, or whatever you call ’em, who struck a pocket of gold [DA].
1875		L. Swinburne in Scribner’s Monthly II 508: Pilgrim and tenderfoot were formerly applied almost exclusively to newly-imported cattle, but by a natural transference they are usually used to designate all new-comers, tourists, and business men [F&H].
1882		W.A. Baillie-Grohman Camps in the Rockies 147: The boy paid me the compliment that, for a ‘tenderfoot,’ I had done ‘mighty well.’.
1890		E. Custer Following the Guidon 172: The frontiersman had then, as now, a great ‘despise,’ as they put it for the tenderfoot.
1900		Boy’s Own Paper 29 Dec. 200: A certain ‘tenderfoot,’ newly arrived from England.
1910		‘O. Henry’ ‘The Call of the Tame’ in Strictly Business (1915) 100: The employment of the wonderful plural ‘tenderfeet’ in each of the scribe’s stories.
1925		K. Mullen ‘Westernisms’ in AS I:3 150: Printed on a sign, ‘Cabins for Baching,’ it is a queer-looking word which the tenderfoot has to read twice to comprehend.
1931		P. Thomson ‘Five Men and a Horse’ in Botkin Folk-Say 285: I lost the pot like a tenderfoot Who plays a crooked wheel.
1942		S. Philips Big Spring 168: I guess the most spectacular tenderfoot that ever came to Big Spring was the Earl of Aylesford.
1959		I. & P. Opie Lore and Lang. of Schoolchildren (1977) 86: The tenderfoot is instructed to respond ‘Just like me.’.
1970		‘Red’ Rudensky Gonif 77: It’s never your own mistakes that trap you — it’s always some tenderfoot’s.
a.1986		‘Old Zebra Dun’ in G. Logsdon Whorehouse Bells Were Ringing (1995) 84: When Sam’s burro starts to brayin’ at the settin’ of the sun, / We think about the tenderfoot who rode ol’ Zebra Dun.
1990		J. Wambaugh Golden Orange (1991) 141: More like a mile [...] It just seemed that far to a tenderfoot.

2. a latent or inexperienced homosexual male.

1972		B. Rodgers Queens’ Vernacular 195: tenderfoot latent homosexual.
1978		R. Price Ladies’ Man (1985) 247: In the movie two Boy Scouts crammed what looked like a five-pound salami up the ass of a tenderfoot.

the penis.

1765

Harris’s List of Covent Garden Ladies 135: [W]e have so high an opinion of Mrs. W-df-r’s abilities in forming the tender plant.

a squeamish, oversensitive person.

c.1698		B.E. Dict. Canting Crew n.p.: Tender-parnel, a very nicely Educated creature, apt to catch Cold upon the least blast of Wind.
1725		New Canting Dict. [as cit. c.1698].
1737, 1759, 1760, 1776		Bailey Universal Etym. Eng. Dict. [as cit. c.1698].
1785, 1788, 1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue n.p.: tender parnell a tender creature, fearful of the least puff of wind or drop of rain; as tender as Parnell, who broke her finger in a posset drink.
1811		Lex. Balatronicum.
1823		Egan Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.