gripple

• IPA^(key): /ˈɡɹɪpəl/
• Rhymes: -ɪpəl

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

• grippal, griple
• grippill (Scotland)

gripple (comparative more gripple, superlative most gripple)

1. (Britain dialectal, Northern England, Scotland) Griping; tenacious; gripping.
2. (Britain dialectal, Northern England, Scotland) Grasping; greedy; snatchy; mean; niggardly; avaricious, covetous.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Spenser to this entry?)

   • Bishop Joseph Hall

     It is easy to observe, that none are so gripple and hard fisted, as the childless […]

3. (Britain dialectal, Scotland) Sprained.

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”).

gripple (plural gripples)

1. A ditch; a drain.

From grip +‎ -le.

gripple (plural gripples)

1. (obsolete, rare) A hook.
2. (obsolete, rare) A grasp; a grip.
   • 1596, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, V.2:

     Ne ever Artegall his griple strong / For any thing wold slacke, but still upon him hong.

From grip +‎ -le (frequentative suffix).

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

1. (transitive, rare) To grasp.