at grips

English edit

Fighting; engaged in a confrontation.
- 1938, Norman Lindsay, Age of Consent, 1st Australian edition, Sydney, N.S.W.: Ure Smith, published 1962, →OCLC, page 140:
  No doubt of it, Edmund was at grips with that bumptious little hairy dog. They were going it at the very top note of sadistic fury, screaming and snip-snapping in such a lightning mixture of black and white murder that the eye could not follow it.