Grip

How to spell grip

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce grip

What does grip mean?

1. verbTo take and hold something firmly with the hands.
2. nounA firm hold or the manner in which something is grasped.

Grip in a sentence

• verb

  Climbers grip the rope tightly before they lean back.

• noun

  The rubber handle gives a better grip when your hands are wet.

• verb

  The cold made her grip the railing on the icy steps.

• noun

  A good grip on the steering wheel keeps the car steady.

Where does grip come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a native English word that goes straight back to Old English, where the verb grippan meant 'to seize or hold fast' and the related noun gripe meant 'a grasp or clutch'. It belongs to a broad Germanic family: the same root produced the Dutch grijpen and the German greifen, both still meaning 'to grasp', which shows how old and stable the idea is. The word kept its plain spelling because it is short, blunt, and Anglo-Saxon in character, with the single consonants and the short vowel that English speakers expect. Over the centuries the meaning broadened from a literal physical hold to figurative uses such as gripping someone's attention or being in the grip of an illness. The closely related word 'gripe', meaning to complain, shares the same ancestry, since an old sense was a sharp, clutching pain in the gut.

How the word is built

• grip (native Old English root meaning 'to grasp'); a single, unbreakable root word with no prefix or suffix