Word.ws English Dictionary

in the grip of

in the grip of preposition: overwhelmed or controlled by something adverse.

Preposition

in the grip of

  1. Overwhelmed or controlled by something adverse.
    • I couldn't enjoy life while I was in the grip of drug abuse.
    • At that time, the city [Christiania, now Oslo] was in the grip of a cholera epidemic, and victims were dying at the rate of 60 a day. Bradshaw contracted the disease, and died on September 6 [1853].1950 January, “Notes and News: George Bradshaw's Grave”, in Railway Magazine, pages 61–62

Questions about in the grip of

What does in the grip of mean?
In the grip of means overwhelmed or controlled by something adverse.
What part of speech is in the grip of?
In the grip of is a preposition.

Words near in the grip of in the dictionary

  1. in the future
  2. in the game
  3. in the green
  4. in the green tree
  5. in the green tree … in the dry
  6. in the grip of
  7. in the gristle
  8. in the groove
  9. in the gross
  10. in the ground
  11. in the hand

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: in the grip of (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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Cite this entry: “in the grip of.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/in_the_grip_of. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.