Gripple
adj, noun, verb ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A ditch; a drain.
- 2 A hook. obsolete, rare
- 3 A grasp; a grip. obsolete, rare
"Ne ever Artegall his griple strong / For any thing wold slacke, but still upon him hong."
- 1 To grasp. rare, transitive
- 1 Griping; tenacious; gripping. Northern-England, Scotland, UK, dialectal
- 2 Grasping; greedy; snatchy; mean; niggardly; avaricious, covetous. Northern-England, Scotland, UK, dialectal
"Still as he rode, he gnasht his teeth to see Those heapes of gold with griple Covetyse"
- 3 Sprained. Scotland, UK, dialectal
Example
More examples"Still as he rode, he gnasht his teeth to see Those heapes of gold with griple Covetyse"
Etymology
From Middle English gripel, from Old English gripol, gripul (“able to grasp much; capacious”); equivalent to grip + -le.
From Middle English gryppel, from Old English *gripel, *grēpel, diminutive of Old English grep, grēpe (“furrow, ditch, drain”), equivalent to grip + -le (diminutive suffix). Cognate with German Low German Grüppel (“ditch”).
From grip + -le.
From grip + -le (frequentative suffix).
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.