Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • intransitive verb Informal To complain naggingly or petulantly; grumble.
  • intransitive verb To have sharp pains in the bowels.
  • intransitive verb Informal To irritate; annoy.
  • intransitive verb To cause sharp pain in the bowels of.
  • intransitive verb To grasp; seize.
  • intransitive verb To oppress or afflict.
  • noun Informal A complaint.
  • noun Sharp, spasmodic pains in the bowels.
  • noun A firm hold; a grasp.
  • noun A grip; a handle.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To lay hold of with the fingers or claws; grasp strongly; clutch.
  • To seize and hold firmly in any way.
  • To tighten; clench.
  • To produce pain in as if by constriction or contraction: as, to gripe the bowels.
  • Hence To pinch; straiten; distress.
  • To lay hold with or as with the hand; fix the grasp or clutch.
  • To get money by grasping practices and exactions: as, a griping miser.
  • To suffer griping pains.
  • Nautical, to lie too close to the wind: as, a ship gripes when she has a tendency to shoot up into the wind in spite of her helm.
  • noun A ditch or trench: same as grip, 1.
  • ; pret. and pp. griped, ppr. griping. Same as grip.
  • noun Fast hold with the hand or arms; close embrace; grasp; clutch.
  • noun A handful.
  • noun Forcible retention; bondage: as, the gripe of a tyrant or a usurer; the gripe of superstition.
  • noun In pathology, an intermittent spasmodic pain in the intestines, as in colic; cramp-colic; cramps: usually in the plural.
  • noun Something used to clutch, seize, or hold a thing; a claw or grip.
  • noun Specifically A pitchfork; a dung-fork.
  • noun Nautical: The forefoot, or piece of timber which terminates the keel at the fore end. See cut under stem.
  • noun The compass or sharpness of a ship's stem under water, chiefly toward the bottom of the stem.
  • noun Nautical: plural Lashings for boats, to secure them in their places at sea, whether hanging at the davits or stowed on deck.
  • noun One of two bands by which a boat is prevented from swinging about when suspended from the davits.
  • noun A small boat.
  • noun A miser.
  • noun A griffin.
  • noun A vulture.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun Grasp; seizure; fast hold; clutch.
  • noun That on which the grasp is put; a handle; a grip.
  • noun (Mech.) A device for grasping or holding anything; a brake to stop a wheel.
  • noun Oppression; cruel exaction; affiction; pinching distress.
  • noun Pinching and spasmodic pain in the intestines; -- chiefly used in the plural.
  • noun The piece of timber which terminates the keel at the fore end; the forefoot.
  • noun The compass or sharpness of a ship's stern under the water, having a tendency to make her keep a good wind.
  • noun An assemblage of ropes, dead-eyes, and hocks, fastened to ringbolts in the deck, to secure the boats when hoisted; also, broad bands passed around a boat to secure it at the davits and prevent swinging.
  • noun miser; a niggard.
  • noun (Zoöl.), obsolete A vulture; the griffin.
  • noun [Obs.] an alchemist's vessel.
  • transitive verb To catch with the hand; to clasp closely with the fingers; to clutch.
  • transitive verb To seize and hold fast; to embrace closely.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English gripen, to seize, from Old English grīpan.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Old English grīpan, from Proto-Germanic *grīpanan. Cognate with Dutch grijpen, German greifen, Swedish gripa, Danish gribe.

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Examples

Comments

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  • Citation (in an unknown sense) on chock.

    September 9, 2008

  • When complaints become ripe.

    October 11, 2008

  • Ooh, I came here to link the page but yarb already did it. :) Weirdnet didn't get the nautical meaning of this verb, which is on the chock page.

    October 15, 2008

  • Babies can have a 'gripeing' pain when they have 'gripe', a singular noun.

    June 1, 2012