gripple

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈɡɹɪpəl/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɪpəl

Etymology 1

From Middle English gripel, from Old English gripol, gripul (“able to grasp much; capacious”); equivalent to grip +‎ -le.

Alternative forms

• grippal, griple
• grippill (Scotland)

Adjective

gripple (comparative more gripple, superlative most gripple)

1. (UK dialectal, Northern England, Scotland) Griping; tenacious; gripping.
2. (UK dialectal, Northern England, Scotland) Grasping; greedy; snatchy; mean; niggardly; avaricious, covetous.
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book I, Canto IV”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:

     Still as he rode, he gnasht his teeth to see
     Those heapes of gold with griple Covetyse

   • 1646, Joseph Hall, The Balm of Gilead:

     It is easy to observe, that none are so gripple and hard fisted, as the childless […]

3. (UK dialectal, Scotland) Sprained.

Etymology 2

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”).

Noun

gripple (plural gripples)

1. A ditch; a drain.

Etymology 3

From grip +‎ -le.

Noun

gripple (plural gripples)

1. (obsolete, rare) A hook.
2. (obsolete, rare) A grasp; a grip.
   • 1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book V, Canto II”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:

     Ne ever Artegall his griple strong / For any thing wold slacke, but still upon him hong.

Etymology 4

From grip +‎ -le (frequentative suffix).

Verb

gripple (third-person singular simple present gripples, present participle grippling, simple past and past participle grippled)

1. (transitive, rare) To grasp.

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “gripple”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)