Word.ws English Dictionary

gripple

/ˈɡɹɪpəl/

gripple adjective: griping; tenacious; gripping.

Adjective

gripple (comparative more gripple, superlative most gripple)

  1. (Northern England, Scotland, UK, dialectal) Griping; tenacious; gripping.
  2. (Northern England, Scotland, UK, dialectal) Grasping; greedy; snatchy; mean; niggardly; avaricious, covetous.
    • Still as he rode, he gnasht his teeth to see
      Those heapes of gold with griple Covetyse1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book I, Canto IV”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC
    • It is easy to observe, that none are so gripple and hard fisted, as the childless […]1646, Jos[eph] Hall, The Balme of Gilead: Or, Comforts for the Distressed, both Morall and Divine. […], London: […] M[iles] Flesher, for Nat[haniel] Butter, →OCLC
  3. (Scotland, UK, dialectal) Sprained.

Noun (1)

gripple (plural gripples)

  1. A ditch; a drain.

Noun (2)

gripple (plural gripples)

  1. (obsolete, rare) A hook.
  2. (obsolete, rare) A grasp; a grip.
    • Ne ever Artegall his griple strong / For any thing wold slacke, but still upon him hong.1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book V, Canto II”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC

Verb

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

  1. (Scotland, obsolete, rare, transitive) To grasp or grab.
    • 'If owt comes to Mulvaaney 'long o' you, I'll gripple you, clouts or no clouts on your ugly head, an' I'll draw t' throat twistyways, man. See there now.'1889, Rudyard Kipling, Life's Handicap, The Incarnation of Krishna Mulvaney

Forms of gripple

Adjective
comparativemore gripple
superlativemost gripple
alternative formgrippal
alternative formgriple
alternative formgrippill
Noun
pluralgripples
Verb
third-person singular presentgripples
present participlegrippling
past participlegrippled
pastgrippled

Origin of gripple

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

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”).

From grip + -le.

Words formed from gripple

Words that rhyme with gripple

Questions about gripple

What does gripple mean?
Gripple means griping; tenacious; gripping.
What part of speech is gripple?
Gripple can be an adjective, a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce gripple?
Gripple is pronounced /ˈɡɹɪpəl/.

Words near gripple in the dictionary

  1. gripping off
  2. grippingly
  3. grippingness
  4. grippings
  5. Grippis
  6. gripple
  7. grippled
  8. grippleness
  9. gripples
  10. grippling
  11. Grippo

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: gripple (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-gripple.wav.

Cite this entry: “gripple.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/gripple. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.