The insult "pansy" actually comes from the French "pensée", which is the past tense of "to think", but is also a feminine reflexive. This term came about in the mid-fifteenth century, and essentially, it was used pejoratively to describe a man who thinks too much (like a woman is the intimation). Thinking men were not brawny, active, robust men, therefore they were thought to be slightly effeminate. It wasn't until 1929 that the term "pansy" came to mean sissy boi.
