gripple

• IPA^(key): /ˈɡɹɪpəl/

• Audio (Southern England):

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• Rhymes: -ɪpəl

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

• grippal, griple
• grippill (Scotland)

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.

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”).

gripple (plural gripples)

1. A ditch; a drain.

From grip +‎ -le.

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.

From grip +‎ -le (frequentative suffix).

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

1. (transitive, rare) To grasp.