How to use grapple in a sentence

28 example sentences · verb, noun

Grapple means to seize something and hold it firmly. Example: “Class 4 2-6-4T No. 42098 grapples with the 1 in 63 to Troutbeck at the head of the "Lakes Express".”

Examples of grapple by meaning

verbTo ponder and intensely evaluate a problem; to struggle to deal with.

to grapple with one's conscience
Class 4 2-6-4T No. 42098 grapples with the 1 in 63 to Troutbeck at the head of the "Lakes Express".1961 October, ""Voyageur"", “The Cockermouth, Keswick & Penrith Railway”, in Trains Illustrated, page 599, photo caption
Fear of death is a universal human concern with which all thinking people at some point grapple.2018, Timothy R. Jennings, The Aging Brain, →ISBN, page 173

verbTo fasten, as with a grapple; (by extension) to fix; to join indissolubly.

Then I saw it — a figure swinging just above the arches, hanging from rope grappled to a lintel of an alcove fifty feet above.1988, Roger Lichtenberg Simon, Raising the dead, →ISBN
These toppings impart a swaying motion to anyone climbing a rope grappled onto them, making climbing difficult.1997, European Conference on Security and Detection - ECOS97, Incorporating the One Day Symposium on Technology Used for Combating Fraud...
He had one of the ropes grappled around a ledge of a window and the other end around his ankle for safety purposes, not really expecting it to come into play.2012, Rudy Rodriguez, Before There Was, Lulu.com, →ISBN, page 448

verbTo climb (whether by means of a grapple and rope, or by hand, etc).

In cases such as this, the Silencer usually grappled up the outside of the building.2016, Cora Buhlert, St. Nicholas of Hell's Kitchen: An Silencer Holiday Story, Pegasus Pulp Publishing, →ISBN, page 27
I made haste and grappled up the next branch, determined to get to the top first.2016, Russ Katz, The Principal's Daughter, Dog Ear Publishing, →ISBN, page 5
MacAdams didn't look back to see what they were up to, just ran across the flat roof and grappled down the other side of the building.2017, Edward W. Robertson, Freefall

verbTo use a grapple (for example to attempt to find, hook, and raise a net or cable).

The following days I spent patrolling the river and grappling for nets.1912, Sessional Papers - Legislature of the Province of Ontario, page 126
After returning from the cable factory with another load of cable and repeaters, the buoy will be recovered or the rope grappled for.2012, Jamal Manassah, Innovations in Telecommunications, Elsevier, page 427

nounA combination of grape and apple flavors.

Both apple butter and apple jelly, as well as "grapple" (grape-apple) jelly are sitting in little mason jars on the top shelf.1997 July 28, LadyCheron, “A Pawned Pond”, in alt.callahans (Usenet)
Bradley’s mother prefers grapple juice that is 25 percent grape and 75 percent apple.2001, Charlene Beckmann, Esther Billings, “Menu of Problems: April 2001”, in Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School, volume 6, number 8...
You'd end up with neither grape juice or apple juice, but with some new mixture possibly called grapple juice.2009 March 31, Bruce A. Ware, Big Truths for Young Hearts, Crossway, →ISBN, pages 122–123

More sentences with grapple

The pair grappled and they wrestled before Madueke went down and Mendes fell on top of him.2026 May 30, David Hytner, “Paris Saint-Germain retain Champions League as Arsenal dream dashed in shootout”, in The Guardian, archived…. From the entry flick on the afterburners
Here he learned that the slow man on a pod grapple.1969 November, James Tiptree, Jr., Worlds of IF, page 17. From the entry mailpod
Let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all.”2020, Tim Vivian, Other Voices, Other Rooms: Poems, page 100. From the entry eff
The divers grappled each other in an octopuslike duel.1961, Victor Appleton, Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung. From the entry octopuslike
Sullen now, with stultified spleen, Mrs Dibble grappled her crutches and levered herself upright after an ungainly struggle.1950, Norman Lindsay, Dust or Polish?, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, page 150. From the entry lever
We get a quick shot of Battinson taking down a thug using 1 hand, the Batmobile exhaust firing up and a vertical grapple upwards.2020 September, Emmanuel Naicker, “The Biggest Highlights of DC Fandome”, in Alpha Magazine, page 9. From the entry Battinson
One morning, maybe three weeks after my last grapple with Penny, Thomson came roaring into our form room. ‘Oi, Fleming, you spastic.1995, Nick Hornby, High Fidelity, London: Victor Gollancz, →ISBN, page 17. From the entry form room
They would grapple till they were tired, then stop; but as soon as one would start for the bears the other would gaffle him again.1949, Chase Salmon Osborn, Stellanova Osborn, Northwoods Sketches, page 29. From the entry gaffle
As school districts around the U.S. continue to grapple with whether to reopen classrooms amid the coronavirus pandemic, data shows Florida started in-person learning without turning schools into superspreaders.2021 March 17, Arian Campo-Flores, “Florida Schools Reopened Without Becoming Covid-19 Superspreaders”, in The Wall Street Journal, New…. From the entry superspreader
But other mukhtars and collaborators frequently expected more concrete returns, and security officials grappled with the subject of how to compensate collaborators from the time the state was founded.2010, Hillel Cohen, “Beginning a Beautiful Friendship: The Rise of the Collaborator Class”, in Haim Watzman, transl., Good Arabs: The…. From the entry mukhtar
Pundit Bill O'Reilly grapples with "panophobia" (the fear of everything) while, strangely, Rush Limbaugh battles both "catoptrophobia," the fear of mirrors and "Walloonphobia," the fear of the Walloons.2008 February 6, Gordon (quoting Ed Naha), “We have nothing to fear...but these bozos”, in misc.news.internet.discuss (Usenet). From the entry catoptrophobia
Even a 10-minute Chopin ballade for piano, let alone Messiaen’s 75-minute “Turangalila Symphony,” tries to grapple with, activate and organize a relatively substantial span of time.2007 December 30, Anthony Tommasini, “A Patience to Listen, Alive and Well”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 26 Jan…. From the entry ballade
Roth’s own “Portnoy’s Complaint”) that cut him off from his family and his past, and forced him to grapple with the unreckoned consequences of his art.2007 October 2, Michiko Kakutani, “Seeking a Moral at the End of the Tale”, in New York Times. From the entry unreckoned
Uganda grapples with widespread government corruption with an estimated Sh. 10 trillion ($2.7 billion) in public funding diverted each year, according to its anti-graft body, the Inspectorate of Government (IGG).2024 July 22, Nimi Princewill, “Uganda’s President Museveni warns citizens they are ‘playing with fire’ over planned protests”, in CNN. From the entry Sh.

Meaning of grapple

verb To seize something and hold it firmly.
verb To wrestle or tussle.
verb To ponder and intensely evaluate a problem; to struggle to deal with.

Full definition of grapple

Questions about grapple in a sentence

How do you use grapple in a sentence?: Grapple is used as a verb and noun. For example: “Class 4 2-6-4T No. 42098 grapples with the 1 in 63 to Troutbeck at the head of the "Lakes Express".”
What is a short sentence with grapple?: “to grapple with one's conscience”
What does grapple mean?: Grapple means to seize something and hold it firmly.

Adapted from Wiktionary: grapple (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Cite this page: “How to use grapple in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/grapple. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.