gropery

From grope +‎ -ery.

gropery (plural groperies)

1. (uncommon) Groping; the act of, or an instance of, groping.
   • 1831, The Gentleman's Magazine, page 553:

     State quacks, bills for Popery,
     Not for our merits, Lord, we claim,
     Stage-reminiscences, frolics, and fibs,
     Exemption from the woe;
     Lumps, bumps, gall and scull-gropery,
     We ask it all in Mercy's name,

   • 1887, Temple Bar: A London Magazine for Town and Country Readers, page 47:

     What the deuce, then, should make you shrink now, when almost all drudgery, and gropery and pokery is over; when you have plenty of materials to produce, and every step will bring you into a more pleasurable country,

   • 1969, Morton M. Hunt, The Affair: A Portrait of Extra-marital Love in Contemporary America, Signet Book:

     including “party gropery” - the brief surreptitious petting that often goes on in gardens, on balconies, and in kitchens — is analogous to the orgiastic festivals in which married people, in preliterate societies, were permitted a brief period of  

   • 1991 (printed), Thomas Twining, A Selection of Thomas Twining's Letters, 1734-1804: The Record of a Tranquil Life, Edwin Mellen Press, page 257:

     To look over your MS will be pure amusement & gratification to me; & it will be kindness to furnish me with so pleasant a relief from my own faggings, & book-huntings, & groperies, & pokeries, & sweepings, & cobweb-catchings.

   • 1993, Kenneth Branagh (screenplay and film notes), William Shakespeare, Much Ado about Nothing, W. W. Norton & Company (→ISBN), page 27:

     She finds this unspeakably funny and barks herself off into the darkness whilst the gropery of her partner goes on apace. Exterior / CHAPEL YARD / Night / Drinking Fountain BEATRICE charges into view,

• Groyper