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Gripe   Listen
noun
Gripe  n.  
1.
Grasp; seizure; fast hold; clutch. "A barren scepter in my gripe."
2.
That on which the grasp is put; a handle; a grip; as, the gripe of a sword.
3.
(Mech.) A device for grasping or holding anything; a brake to stop a wheel.
4.
Oppression; cruel exaction; affiction; pinching distress; as, the gripe of poverty.
5.
Pinching and spasmodic pain in the intestines; chiefly used in the plural.
6.
(Naut.)
(a)
The piece of timber which terminates the keel at the fore end; the forefoot.
(b)
The compass or sharpness of a ship's stern under the water, having a tendency to make her keep a good wind.
(c)
pl. An assemblage of ropes, dead-eyes, and hocks, fastened to ringbolts in the deck, to secure the boats when hoisted; also, broad bands passed around a boat to secure it at the davits and prevent swinging.
Gripe penny, a miser; a niggard.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Gripe" Quotes from Famous Books



... be: it was a grand chance given him of proving his will supreme—that is himself a free man! He drew himself up, with a full breath, and stepped within the arch. Up rose the horror again, jerked itself towards him with a clank, and held out its hand. Malcolm seized it with such a gripe that its fingers came off ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald

... sickles stand the reaper train: Here, stretch'd in ranks, the level'd swaths are found; Sheaves heaped on sheaves here thicken up the ground. With sweeping stroke the mowers strow the lands; The gath'rers follow, and collect in bands: And last the children, in whose arms are borne (Too short to gripe them) the brown sheaves of corn. The rustic monarch of the field descries, With silent glee, the heaps around him rise. A ready banquet on the turf is laid Beneath an ample oak's expanded shade. The victim ox the sturdy youth prepare: The reapers due repast, ...
— The Young Farmer: Some Things He Should Know • Thomas Forsyth Hunt

... lived to carry (As he the manuscript he cherished) To Rat-land home his commentary, Which was, 'At the first shrill notes of the pipe, I heard a sound as of scraping tripe, And putting apples wondrous ripe Into a cider press's gripe; And a moving away of pickle-tub boards, And a leaving ajar of conserve cupboards, And a drawing the corks of train-oil-flasks, And a breaking the hoops of butter casks; And it seemed as if a voice (Sweeter far than by harp or by psaltery Is breathed) called ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various

... man, who, when a gloomy band Of vile excisemen threatened all the land, Help'd to deliver from their harpy gripe The cheerful bottle and the social pipe. O rare Ben Bradley! may for this the bowl, Still unexcised, rejoice thy honest soul! May still the best in Christendom for this Cleave to thy ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson

... would first bite out the minister's finger-nails,—a form of torture then in vogue among the northern Indians, both converts and heathen. Williams offered him a hand and invited him to begin; on which he gave the thumb-nail a gripe with his teeth, and then let it go, saying, "No good minister, bad as the devil." The failure seems to have discouraged him, for he made no further attempt to convert the ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman

... excuses. He has ceased to be his own master, and has lost the independent bearing of a man. He seeks to excite pity, and pleads for time. A sharp attorney pounces on him, and suddenly he feels himself in the vulture's gripe. He tries a friend or a relative, but all that he obtains is a civil leer, and a cool repulse. He tries a money-lender; and, if he succeeds, he is only out of the frying-pan into the fire. It is easy to see what the end will be,—a life of mean shifts ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles

... Two-Shoes was not her real name. No; her father's name was Meanwell, and he was for many years a considerable farmer in the parish where Margery was born; but by the misfortunes which he met with in business, and the wicked persecutions of Sir Timothy Gripe, and an overgrown farmer called Graspall, he was effectually ruined. These men turned the farmer, his wife, Little Margery, and her brother out of doors, without any of the necessaries ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... interwoven with the church—'meeting,' we ought to say—in that vicinity, that speaking disparagingly of him would have appeared like assailing Christianity. It is true, that many an unfortunate fellow-citizen in Suffolk had been made to feel how close was the gripe of his hand, when he found himself in its grasp; but there is a way of practising the most ruthless extortion, that serves not only to deceive the world, but which would really seem to mislead the extortioner himself. Phrases take the place of deeds, ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper

... casuists know too well that by such frank confession, they would soon lose their hold on Catholic populations, especially on women, by whom, through confession, they rule the world. They much prefer to keep their gripe on benighted minds, frightened consciences, and trembling souls. No wonder, then, that they fully endorse and confirm the decisions of the councils of Latran and Trent ordering "that all sins must be confessed such as God knows ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy

... pressed a doe to dire extremity, and it has only been when hope had entirely forsaken her, or when her capture was inevitable, that she has reluctantly thrown out the fawn. Their method of warfare has often reminded me of the style of two practiced pugilists, the aim of each being to firmly gripe his opponent by the shoulder, upon accomplishing which, the long hind leg, with its horny blade projecting from its toe, comes into formidable play. It is lifted and drawn downward with a rapid movement, and one or other of the combatants soon shows the entrails ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XV., No. 388, June 9, 1883 • Various

... dreadful plague which visited London in 1625 (Charles I.). Kentish, of whom Calamy entertained a high opinion, had been persecuted by the Government. Knowle, another minister of this chapel, had fled to New England to escape Laud's cat-like gripe. In Cromwell's time he had been lecturer at Bristol Cathedral, and had there greatly exasperated the Quakers. Knowles and Kentish are said to have been so zealous as sometimes to preach till they fainted. ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... finished it was, "Haul the seine-boat alongside—pump out what water's left." Then, "Shift that painter and hook on the big painter. Drop her astern and give her plenty of line. Where's the dorymen? Where's Tommie and Joe? Haul the dories into the hatch, Tommie, and make 'em fast. Gripe 'em good while you're at it. Clear the deck of all loose gear—put it below, all of it—keelers, everything. Maybe 'twon't be much of a blow, but there's no telling—it may. She mayn't be the kind that washes everything over, but put ...
— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly

... in the act of being hurried off by their captors. It was then my heart was wrung, by the spectacle of Gabriella struggling in the arms of the chief. I was helpless to interfere. I was prostrate upon the earth, and held fast in the gripe of two brawny savages—one kneeling on each side of me. I expected them at every instant to put an end to my life. I awaited the final blow—either the stroke of a tomahawk or the thrust of a spear. I only wondered they were delaying my death. My wonders ceased, ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid

... {conge'}; and they also gave him a compliment. The men's names were Mr. Hold-the-world, Mr. Money-love, and Mr. Save-all; men that Mr. By-ends had formerly been acquainted with; for in their minority they were schoolfellows, and were taught by one Mr. Gripe-man, a schoolmaster in Love-gain, which is a market town in the county of Coveting, in the north. This schoolmaster taught them the art of getting, either by violence, cozenage, flattery, lying, or by putting on the guise of religion; and these four gentlemen had attained much ...
— The Pilgrim's Progress - From this world to that which is to come. • John Bunyan

... what did it. This eternal waiting. When he was a kid, the grownups were always complaining about the long seven-hour work days and how they cut into their leisure time. Well, maybe they had reason to gripe, but at least there was some leisure before work began or after it was through. Now that extra time was consumed in waiting. Standing in line, standing in crowds, wearing yourself ...
— This Crowded Earth • Robert Bloch

... be likely to thrive, and in the way of preferment, who but he? In the vulgar opinion, if a man be wealthy, no matter how he gets it, of what parentage, how qualified, how virtuously endowed, or villainously inclined; let him be a bawd, a gripe, an usurer, a villain, a pagan, a barbarian, a wretch, [2209]Lucian's tyrant, "on whom you may look with less security than on the sun;" so that he be rich (and liberal withal) he shall be honoured, admired, adored, reverenced, and highly [2210]magnified. "The rich is had ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... sounds To my world-seeking heart paid fealty, And catered for it as the Cretan bees Brought honey to the baby Jupiter, Who in his soft hand crushed a violet, 181 Godlike foremusing the rough thunder's gripe; Then did I entertain the poet's song, My great Idea's guest, and, passing o'er That iron bridge the Tuscan built to hell, I heard Ulysses tell of mountain-chains Whose adamantine links, his manacles, The ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... a wound, Whose mangled bodies strew the ensanguin'd ground, To parch and stiffen in the blaze of day, Consign'd to vultures, and to wolves a prey, Your toils are past; no more ye wake to feel Lust's savage gripe, or rapine's reeking steel! And Thou, to whom my wedded faith was given, On earth my solace, and my hope in heaven, Approv'd in manhood, as in youth ador'd, Belov'd while living, as in death deplor'd, O stay thy flight! ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis

... credite shee deliuereth; yet I rather incline to their side, who would warrant her authoritie by apparant veritie. Notwithstanding, in this question, I will not take on me the person of either Iudge, or stickler: and therefore if there bee any so plunged in the common floud, as they will still gripe fast, what they haue once caught hold on, let them sport themselves with these coniectures, vpon which mine auerment in behalf of Plymmouth is grounded. The place where Brute is said to haue first landed, was Totnes in Cornwall, and therefore this wrastling likely to haue chaunced there, ...
— The Survey of Cornwall • Richard Carew

... cursed for several minutes straight, drawing the admiring glances of his assistants. It was safe enough for a high-ranking labman to gripe about Security—in fact, it was more or less ...
— Security • Poul William Anderson

... but before he could draw it his arms were glued to his sides by the bear-like embrace of Henri, while Dick tied a handkerchief quickly yet firmly round his mouth. The whole thing was accomplished in two minutes. After taking his knife and tomahawk away, they loosened their gripe and escorted him ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... pyramid, whose top is lost in the sky, as its base in tumultuous murky waves. From the fluctuating crowds who inundate the base of the tribunal, we rise to Pilate, surrounded and perplexed by the varied ferocity of the sanguinary synod to whose remorseless gripe he surrenders his wand, and from him we ascend to the sublime resignation of innocence in Christ, and, regardless of the roar, securely repose on his countenance. Such is the grandeur of a conception, which ...
— Rembrandt and His Works • John Burnet

... The art of cheating at cards, composed of the following associates: bankers, those who play booty; the gripe, he that betteth; and the person cheated, who is styled the vincent; ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.

... Granted; don't draw back; come, a cordial gripe. We are friends; we have both suffered from the same cause. There, that's right—honest palm to palm. Now, how say you—have ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... feete did blesse the happie land? Eurymine, Oh wilt thou not attend? Flie from thy foe, Ascanio is thy friend: The fearfull hare so shuns the labouring hound, And so the Dear eschues the Huntsman wound; The trembling Foule so flies the Falcons gripe, The Bond-man so his angry maisters stripe. I follow not as Phoebus Daphne did, Nor as the Dog pursues the trembling Kid. Thy shape it was; alas, I saw not thee! That sight were fitter for the Gods then ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various

... nearer we saw that it had also an extraordinary long snout. It seemed in no degree afraid of True, and he evidently considered it a formidable antagonist. Presently it lifted itself up on its hind legs, when True sprang back just in time to avoid a gripe of its claws. Still the creature, undaunted by our appearance, made at him, when, seeing that he was really in danger, John and I rushed forward. We then discovered the creature to be a huge ant-eater, which, though it had no teeth, was armed with formidable claws, with which it would ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston

... enough to push this offence as far as it will go. Let them know that there have been and still are drawcansirs in England, Ireland and Scotland—that Dublin particularly was once full of them; but that they were soon brought to manners by the just resentment of the audience—the gripe of the constable, and the contempt of ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter

... strive to counteract this progressive self emancipation from cruel falsehoods and superstitions, but in vain. The terms of salvation are seen lying in the righteous will of a gracious God, not in the heartless caprice of a priesthood nor in the iron gripe of a set of dogmas. The old priestly monopoly over the way to heaven has been taken off in the knowledge of the enlightened present, and, for all who have unfettered feet to walk with, the passage to God is now across a free ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... placed, Then their blood was scatter’d on every side; Desperate the fight, and the fight did last ’Till the brave black dog in Bran’s gripe died. ...
— King Hacon's Death and Bran and the Black Dog - two ballads - - - Translator: George Borrow • Thomas J. Wise

... from the man who held it behind him, and walked up among us, who with our heads bowed, and breathless with fear, awaited our impending fate. I happened to be standing the foremost, and grasping my arm with a gripe which made my heart sink, with his hand which held the sword he bent down my head still lower than it was. I made sure that he was about to cut off my head, when the women, who had risen from the ground, ran crowding round him, ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat

... defended itself with the energy of despair. This time the battle was a short one. The guaco, using its wings, succeeded in striking its antagonist upon the upraised head, and quickly following up the blow, planted his talons so as to encircle the throat of his victim. The effect of his gripe was instantly apparent. The reptile unfolded itself, and the slender coral body was seen writhing and twisting along the ground. But it did not remain long upon the ground, for in a few moments the guaco rose into the air, and carried the struggling victim into the woods ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid

... explained, turned out to be simply this—The good housewife, when she knew that a docket had been struck against her husband, had taken care to conceal some of her choice cherry brandy, from the rapacious gripe of the messenger to the Commissioners of Bankrupts, on some shelves in a closet up stairs, which also contained, agreeably to the ancient architecture of the building, the trunk of the pump below; and, in trying to move the ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor

... at last he extricated himself from my gripe, 'my daughter married with her free consent, and to one far better fitted to make her happy than you. Go, go—I forgive you—I also was once in love, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 17, No. 483., Saturday, April 2, 1831 • Various

... below is better than one from above—whether it will be more eligible that the Muses should have several more stories to descend, when their nine ladyships are invoked so to do—and that the pen should be taken out of the scraggy hand of a gentleman in rags, and be placed in the plump gripe of a gentleman ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 479, March 5, 1831 • Various

... Dryden and Pope is irresistible. What follows? For having contented our liking, we let them do any thing that they like. Poor Og! poor Shadwell! poor Bayes, poor Cibber! He sprawls and kicks in the gripe of the giant, and we—as if we had sat at bull-fights and the shows of gladiators—when the blood trickles we are tickled, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various

... the priest, havin' blest him, goes down on the ground, An' Shamus O'Brien throws one look around. Then the hangman dhrew near, an' the people grew still, Young faces turned sickly, and warm hearts turn chill, An' the rope bein' ready, his neck was made bare, For the gripe iv the life-strangling cord to prepare; An' the good priest has left him, ...
— Successful Recitations • Various

... friendship, and assure you that I shall always bear it in mind," said Rodney, stopping long enough to give the operator's hand a cordial gripe and shake. ...
— Rodney The Partisan • Harry Castlemon

... of Prudent-Thrifty, who dwelt with Mr. Mind, (for Thrift left children with Mr. Mind, when he was also committed to prison, and their names were Gripe and Rake-All; these he begat of Mr. Mind's bastard daughter, whose name was Mrs. Hold-fast- Bad;)—I say, when his children perceived how the Lord Willbewill had served them that dwelt with him, ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan

... senna tea with prunes which render it palatable, confection of senna, syrup of senna, and the sweet essence of senna are generally very readily taken by children, but all have the disadvantage of being liable to gripe. The German liquorice powder, as it is called, which is composed of powdered senna, liquorice powder, fennel, and a little sulphur with white sugar, is freer from this drawback than any other preparation, and ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.

... immediately began, with an expression of pain, to bare the arm which he had grasped, by drawing up the sleeve of her gown, and it appeared that his gripe had left the purple marks of his iron fingers upon her flesh—"My lord," she said, "as a knight and gentleman, you might have spared my frail arm so severe a proof that you have the greater strength on ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott

... Saxon, hold thine own! No maiden's hand is round thee thrown! That desperate grasp thy frame might feel, Through bars of brass and triple steel!— They tug, they strain! down, down they go, The Gael above, Fitz-James below. The Chieftain's gripe his throat compressed, His knee was planted on his breast; His clotted locks he backward threw, Across his brow his hand he drew, From blood and mist to clear his sight, Then gleamed aloft his dagger bright!— —But hate and fury ill supplied ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various

... nearly half a minute without uttering a syllable; at length he seized Dandy by the arm, which he pressed with the gripe of Hercules, for he was a man ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... naething that I can tell to mortal. I dinna ken what has come ower me. It's just as if a giant had a gripe o' me, and move I canna. But surely I'll ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson

... Tribut, When many of the Governours stood ill Affected to you, all our Garrisons Not sworne then to the Generall States but others, Which the promiscuous multitude gladly followed: When Graves and Vendloe were held by the Spaniard And Nunweghen with violence assaulted, Confusion with one greedy gripe being ready To seaze on all; then when the Sluice was lost And all in muteny at Midleborough, Who then rose up or durst step in before me To doe these Cuntries service? Who then labourd More then the now suspected Barnavelt T'appease ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various

... of shining steel was raised aloft; and the gripe of the powerful hand clutching its hilt ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid

... had not failed me, I might have quoted that line often and appropriately enough. But every agent in the "robbery"—from the vainglorious Virginian, my chief captor, down to the smooth Secretary, whose velvet gripe was so loth to unclose—seemed provokingly bent on exaggerating the importance of their prize. Perhaps the very interest felt in my release, and the exertions unsparingly used—especially in Baltimore—to ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence

... with that backstair, as I am told, up which Madame had led me only the night before. I tried the outer door. To my wild surprise it was open. In a moment I was upon the step, in the free air, and as instantaneously was seized by the arm in the gripe of ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu

... confounded. His eye rolled rapidly from one to the other of the officers at the boldness and determination of this language. Singly, he could hare crushed Henry Grantham in his gripe, even as one of the bears of the forest, near the outskirt of which they stood; but there were two, and while attacking the one, he was sure of being assailed by the other; nay, what was worse, the neighborhood might be alarmed. Moreover, ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson

... themselves over him, covering him with green verdure and gladdening his soul with the love they gave him. The tree, too, drops yearly its leaves upon his back, and the roots, though they hug him closer, seem to him to do it more lovingly and not with the old terrible gripe. ...
— Seven Little People and their Friends • Horace Elisha Scudder

... the ships of the stranger, I in the midst of them bound; and, my child, thou go with them also, Doom'd for the far-off shore and the tarnishing toil of the bondman, Slaving for lord unkind. Or perchance some remorseless Achaian Hurl from the gripe of his hand, from the battlement down to perdition, Raging revenge for some brother perchance that was slaughter'd of Hector, Father, it may be, or son; for not few of the race of Achaia Seiz'd broad earth with their teeth, when they sank from the handling of Hector; For ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various

... hail'd him father to a line of kings: Upon my head they placed a fruitless crown, And put a barren sceptre in my gripe, Thence to be wrench'd with an unlineal hand, No son of mine succeeding. If't be so, For Banquo's issue have I ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley

... who were come to question me; and I likewise heard the rustling of a rope, as if some one had let it down there. I was wondering, and began to feel about me on the ground, when some bones came into my gripe. ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli

... experience from the fatal examples of R. Smith,[33] and T. Baker,[34] and the more recent ones of Thomas Rawlinson,[35] Bridges,[36] and Collins,[37] yet he seemed resolved to brave and to baffle it; but, like his predecessors, he was suddenly crushed within the gripe of the demon, and fell one of the most splendid of his victims. Even the unrivalled medical skill of Mead[38] could save neither his friend nor himself. The Doctor survived his Lordship about twelve years; ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... 'Twas on the heath, As he did gripe and hold it from his breast, He cut my blade with fifty pallid fingers, On his knees, crying out He had at home an old and doating father; And yet I slew him! There was a ribbon round his neck That caught in ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards

... Glover," said the prisoner; "let me but speak one word with you in private, and rescue me from the gripe of this iron fisted and leaden pated clown, and I will show thee that no harm was designed to thee or thine, and, moreover, tell thee ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott

... imbecility; liquor made him savage, fierce, brutal, excited his fiendish temper to its height, nerved his muscular system, inflamed his brain, and gave him the aspect of a devil; and in such guise he entered his wife's peaceful Eden, where she brooded and cooed over her child's slumbers, with one gripe of his hard hand lifted her from her chair, kicked the cradle before him, and, with an awful though muttered oath, thrust mother and child into the entry, locked the door upon them, and fell upon the bed to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... hopeless, thinking of myself forsaken, And thee, dear Loiterer, in the wood o'ertaken With passion for those bold and wanton ones, Who knit thine arms as poison-plants gripe trees With twining cords—their flowers the braveries That flash in the green gloom, ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold

... draw his volatile substance and his tincture: And let the water in glass E be filter'd, And put into the gripe's egg. Lute him well; And leave ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson

... heavy sound was heard, as it was plunged into the yielding flesh, and the hot gushing blood spirted forth in a quick jet into the very face and mouth of the fell murderer. A terrible convulsion, a fierce writhing spasm followed—so strong, so muscularly powerful, that the stern gripe of Cataline was shaken from the throat of his victim, and ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert

... 'Let vultures gripe thy guts, for gourd and Fullam holds, And high and low beguiles the rich and poor. Tester I'll have in pouch, when thou shalt ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott

... the Vatican, go see Laocoon's torture dignifying pain - A father's love and mortal's agony With an immortal's patience blending: —Vain The struggle; vain, against the coiling strain And gripe, and deepening of the dragon's grasp, The old man's clench; the long envenomed chain Rivets the living links,—the enormous asp Enforces pang on pang, ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron

... side, not the dirt side, placed next the skin. She could scarcely have worn this turf when she was up and around the house, could she? She must have had it placed upon her while she was in bed. Josselyn said in his "New England Rarities" that, "to wear the skin of a Gripe dressed with the doun on" would cure pain and coldness of the stomach. Thus did like cure like. A "Restorative Bag" of herbs and spices heated in "boyl'd Vinegar" is asserted to be "comfortable." "It must be as hot as can be endured, and keep yourself from ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle

... the darkness of the mist Encircle thee, O Nose! Shorn of thy rays thou shott'st a fearful gleam 25 (The turtle quiver'd with prophetic fright) Gloomy and sullen thro' the night of steam:— So Satan's Nose when Dunstan urg'd to flight, Glowing from gripe of red-hot pincers dread Athwart the smokes of Hell ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... child, and canst not know us, what we are! The hand she feels upon her is the gods', That reacheth her e'en here, with bloody gripe! Then strive not thou to balk the gods' just doom. O, hadst thou seen her in the dragon's cave, Seen how she leaped to meet that serpent grim, Shot forth the poisonous arrows of her tongue, And darted hate and death from blazing eyes, Then were thy bosom steeled against her tears!— ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... unbroken in nature. Alas! the curves of beauty were concealed by the cumbrous MACHILLAS of the Spanish saddle, which levels all equine distinctions. The single rein lay loosely on the cruel bit that can gripe, and if need be, crush the jaw ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte

... uttering the most horrible blasphemies and execrations. Judith, being the stronger of the two, had the advantage, and she had seized her opponent by the throat with the intention of strangling him, when a most terrific crash was heard causing her to loose her gripe. The air instantly became as hot as the breath of a furnace, and both started to their feet. "What has ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth

... rather than as claims recovered against a struggling litigant,—or at least, that, if your beneficence obtained no credit in your concessions, yet that they should appear the salutary provisions of your wisdom and foresight, not as things wrung from you with your blood by the cruel gripe of a rigid necessity. The first concessions, by being (much against my will) mangled and stripped of the parts which were necessary to make out their just correspondence and connection in trade, were of no use. The next year a feeble attempt was made to bring the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... Atlantic tides, Loading the gallant decks which once Roared a defiance to our guns, With peaceful store; Symbol of peace, their vessel rides!* O'er English waves float Star and Stripe, And firm their friendly anchors gripe ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray

... Sir." She held her weak gripe on his hand still, with the vague outlook in her eyes that came there sometimes. "Was it ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various

... fulfilled, my royal lord," he made answer. "Behold the enemy!" Stooping, he raised the red-cloaked figure by its collar and held it up in the firelight. As a murmur of laughter went around, he lowered it again and spoke more gravely. "A hand needs not be large to get a hilt under its gripe, however. The young wolf is of northern breed,—how he penetrated to the heart of an English camp, I cannot tell,—and there grows in his spirit a bloodthirsty disposition. He seeks my life because in a skirmish, a few days gone by, I had the good luck to kill his ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz

... disposer thou art; and take care, I beseech thee, O lord, that the precious works of supererogation, the goodly pardons, do not fail us in time of need; so that the devils may not find an opportunity to gripe our precious souls, and the dreadful jaws of hell may not swallow us. If we must pass through purgatory thy will be done. It is in thy power to draw us out of it when thou pleasest. Here Homenas began to shed huge hot ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... insulting. This apology was just made in time, as the irritable Celt had begun to entertain the idea of challenging the Spaniard to mortal combat. As it was, however, his good nature at once gave way to the pacific overture that was made him. Seizing the apologist by the hand, with a gripe that produced some dismal contortions of countenance on the part of him on whom it ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton

... empire—but not till the latter days of the kingdoms which grew up out of the ruins; whereas Jesus Christ was born in the time of Augustus, i. e. when the Roman empire itself was in the height of its splendour and vigour. Mr. Everett in p. 201, endeavours to escape the strong gripe of the prophet Daniel, by maintaining that these strong and weak parts, into which the Roman empire was to be divided, meant that it should be divided into "strong and weak institutions." Now to turn this sensible interpretation ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English

... they placed a fruitless crown, And put a barren scepter in my gripe, Thence to be wrenched with an unlineal hand, No son of ...
— Familiar Quotations • Various

... subtilty and dishonesty by more expeditious and compendious measures: the wealth of credulity is an open prey to falsehood; and the possessions of ignorance and imbecility are easily stolen away by the conveyances of secret artifice, or seized by the gripe of ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson

... in the dark wormy earth, cold specks of fire, evil, lights shining in the darkness. Where fallen archangels flung the stars of their brows. Muddy swinesnouts, hands, root and root, gripe ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... unfortunate jealousy and mistaken interest kept England and Scotland at variance, and when the latter kingdom was in the habit of adopting the politics of France, and [end of page 261] embracing its interests, there seems to have been some repelling principle that kept the little nation out of the gripe of ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair

... tried our manhood together, when youngsters, and I was the better chap until my friend reached his eighteenth year, when the heavy metal of the young Dutch giant told in our struggles. After that period was past, I found Dirck too much for me, in a close gripe, though my extraordinary activity rendered the inequality less apparent than it might otherwise have proved. I ought not to apply the term of "extraordinary" to anything about myself, but the word escaped me unconsciously, ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper

... cried Robert Danforth, starting up, and compressing the artist's delicate fingers within a hand that was accustomed to gripe bars of iron. "This is kind and neighborly to come to us at last. I was afraid your perpetual motion had bewitched you out of the remembrance ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... the Countess. "Ask the hind, when the fangs of the deerhound are stretched to gripe her, if she is strong enough to spring over a chasm. I am equal to every effort that may relieve me ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott

... was on his feet in a twinkling, thrust out his hand, gave his ancient crony the gripe of a giant, and slapping the other hand on a bench, "Sit down ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving

... orderly: yet the corpse's face was of a purple hue, the tongue swollen, the eyes starting from their sockets: it might, indeed, possibly have been an apoplectic seizure, which took her in her sleep, and killed her as she lay; but that the gripe of clutching fingers had left their livid seals upon the throat, and countenanced the ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... be; he instantly grappled with Jenkins. Edwin's amazement did not prevent his prompt action; but at the moment he sprang to the rescue, he received a blow from Thomson, who leaped on him, and seized him by the throat with a vice-like gripe. At the same moment Smith ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne

... Mother had the gripe and clutch of poverty upon her face, upon her figure, and not least of all upon her voice. Her sharp and high- pitched words were squeezed out of her, as by the compression of bony fingers on a leathern bag; and ...
— George Silverman's Explanation • Charles Dickens

... landsmen, crowded in the small and malodorous fishing-vessels that were made to serve as transports, was now in the gripe of the most unheroic of maladies. "A terrible northeast storm" had fallen upon them, and, he says, "we lay rolling in the seas, with our sails furled, among prodigious waves." "Sick, day and night," writes the miserable gunsmith, ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman

... to the argument from numbers. Certainly, if the religion of the majority of the people be innocuous to the interests of the nation, the majority have a natural right to be trustees of the nationalty—that property which is set apart for the nation's use, and rescued from the gripe of private hands. But when I say—for the nation's use.—I mean the very reverse of what the Radicals mean. They would convert it to relieve taxation, which I call a private, personal, and perishable use. ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge

... seizing him around the body as if he had been an infant, moved with him to an open window looking out upon a neighboring court. The victim struggled, yelled for succor, but before any of us could interpose, the resolute and powerful man in whose hold he writhed and struggled vainly, with the gripe of a master, had thrust him through the opening, his heels, in their upward evolutions, shattering a dozen of the panes as he disappeared from sight below. We all concluded that he was killed. We were ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms

... plunged and perished! —Save one who, stout as Julius Caesar, Swam across and lived to carry To rat-land home his commentary: Which was, "At the first shrill notes of the pipe, I heard a sound as of scraping tripe, And putting apples, wondrous ripe, Into a cider-press's gripe: And a moving away of pickle-tub-boards, And a leaving ajar of conserve-cupboards, And a drawing the corks of train-oil-flasks, And a breaking the hoops of butter-casks: And it seemed as if a voice (Sweeter far than by harp or by psaltery Is breathed) ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey

... comes, and looks, amidst her guards, Like a weak dove under the falcon's gripe. O heaven, ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden

... undermining more prevails Than doth the cannon. Bear your wrongs conceal'd, And, patient as the tortoise, let this camel Stalk o'er your back unbruis'd: sleep with the lion, And let this brood of secure foolish mice Play with your nostrils, till the time be ripe For th' bloody audit, and the fatal gripe: Aim like a cunning fowler, close one eye, That you the better may your ...
— The White Devil • John Webster

... holidame! Heavy of heart she seems, and sore afflicted. But thus it is when rude calamity Lays its strong gripe upon these mincing minions; The dainty gew-gaw forms dissolve at once, And shiver at the shock. What says her paper? [seeming to read. Ha! What is this? Come nearer, Ratcliffe! Catesby! Mark the contents, ...
— Jane Shore - A Tragedy • Nicholas Rowe

... be charged,—had they understood him, they would have seen in him a young man in whom the fire of youth glowed not the less ardently for the veil of reserve that covered it; who would shrink from no danger, but would not court it in bravado; and who would cling with an invincible tenacity of gripe to any purpose which he might espouse. There is good reason to think that he had come to Canada with purposes already conceived, and that he was ready to avail himself of any stepping-stone which might help ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman

... Keeldar. He glanced at Miss Helstone; he could scarcely bring himself to bend to her. He glared on both the ladies. He looked as if, had either of them been his wife, he would have made a glorious husband at the moment. In each hand he seemed as if he would have liked to clutch one and gripe her to death. ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... from mangling the moose; for which purpose we wrapped ourselves in blankets between its feet, and placed the hatchets within our reach. The night was stormy, and apprehension kept me long awake; but finding my companion in so deep a sleep, that nothing could have roused him, except the actual gripe of a wolf, I thought it advisable to imitate his example, as much as was in my power, rather than bear the burthen of anxiety alone. At day-light we shook off the snow, which was heaped upon us, and endeavoured to kindle ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 1 • John Franklin

... Henceforth the Assyrian rule is maintained over the whole of Chaldaea and Babylonia, with few and brief interruptions, to the close of the Empire. The reluctant victim struggles in his captor's grasp, and now and then for a short space shakes it off; but only to be seized again with a fiercer gripe, until at length his struggles cease, and he resigns himself to a fate which he has come to regard as inevitable. During the last fifty years of the Empire, from B.C. 650 to B.C. 625, the province of Babylon was almost as tranquil ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson

... through the thick ground glass of my astral lamp were as mild as moonbeams, and as unsatisfactory. But the light fell strong and red beneath the shade, and the full glare of the astral lamp seemed centred on that pudgy hand, in its inevitable glove, that had fixed so firm a gripe on the back of the mahogany chair as to strain open one of the fingers of the tight, tawny kid-glove worn by Dr. Englehart. This had parted slightly just above the knuckle of the front-finger, and ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield

... turning the ship round, we had scarcely a foot of space to spare for doing it, and indeed, as it was, her forefoot touched the ground, and loosened the broken part of the wood so much as to enable us to pull it up with ropes, when we found the fragments to consist of the whole of the “gripe” and most of the “cutwater.” The strong breeze continuing, and the sea rising as the open water increased in extent, our bergs were sadly washed and wasted; every hour producing a sensible and serious diminution in their bulk. As, ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry

... take pains the best I may To save your honor, and what thing lieth in me That will I do, but no close manslayings. I will not have God's judgment gripe my throat When I am dead, to hale me into hell For a man's sake slain on this wise. Take heed. ...
— Chastelard, a Tragedy • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... dead-killing eye He rouseth up himself and makes a pause; While she, the picture of pure piety, Like a white hind under the gripe's sharp claws, Pleads, in a wilderness where are no laws, To the rough beast that knows no gentle right, Nor aught ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]

... floods her forward deck; she braces herself, every rod and rivet and timber seems to lend its support; you almost expect to see the wooden walls of your room grow rigid with muscular contraction; she trembles from stem to stern, she recovers, she breaks the gripe of her antagonist, and, rising up, shakes the sea from her with a kind of gleeful wrath; I hear the torrents of water rush along the lower decks, and, finding a means of escape, pour back into the sea, glad to get away on ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs

... Salii stand round the lit altar-fires to sing, their brows bound with poplar boughs, one chorus of young men, one of elders, and extol in song the praises and deeds of Hercules; how first he strangled in his gripe the twin terrors, the snakes of his stepmother; how he likewise shattered in war famous cities, Troy and Oechalia; how under Eurystheus the King he bore the toil of a thousand labours by Juno's malign decrees. Thine ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil

... This undertow, meeting the next surface-wave on the bar which itself has made, forms part of the dam over which the latter breaks, as over an upright wall. The sea thus plays with the land, holding a sand-bar in its mouth awhile before it swallows it, as a cat plays with a mouse; but the fatal gripe is sure to come at last. The sea sends its rapacious east-wind to rob the land, but before the former has got far with its prey, the land sends its honest west-wind to recover some of its own. But, according to Lieutenant Davis, the forms, extent, and distribution ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various

... rescue a drowned wretch from extinction, and warm the flickering spirit into steady flame, such pain it is, the blood forcing its way along the dry channels, and the heavily-ticking nerves, and the sullen heart—the struggle of life and death in him—grim death relaxing his gripe; such pain it is, he cries out no thanks to them that pull him by inches from the depths of the dead river. And he who has thought a love extinct, and is surprised by the old fires, and the old tyranny, he rebels, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... unspeakable Crowd in my breast to burning, when I hear Of this almighty Death, who is, it seems, Inevitable. Could I wrestle with him? I wrestled with the lion, when a boy, 260 In play, till he ran roaring from my gripe. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron

... parley, The sack of an old city in its time, The bursting in of mercenaries and bigots tumultuously and disorderly, Roar, flames, blood, drunkenness, madness, Goods freely rifled from houses and temples, screams of women in the gripe of brigands, Craft and thievery of camp-followers, men running, old persons despairing, The hell of war, the cruelties of creeds, The list of all executive deeds and words just or unjust, The power of personality just ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman

... and the astonishment of the Carlists at their comrade's terror and this sudden attack, was such, that, although men of action and energy, they were for a moment paralysed, and thought not of rescuing their friend from the iron gripe in which he was held. Already his eyes were bloodshot, his face purple, and his tongue protruding from his mouth, when a gendarme came up, and aided by half-a-dozen of those agents who, in plain clothes, half-spy and half-policeman, are to be found ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various

... every argument he could think of, he heard him with his eyes bent on the ground, as if in the deepest meditation, and at length broke forth—"Nature?—yes! it is indeed in the usual beaten path of Nature. The strong gripe and throttle the weak; the rich depress and despoil the needy; the happy (those who are idiots enough to think themselves happy) insult the misery and diminish the consolation of the wretched.—Go hence, thou ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott

... point referred to, and, the creek widening out considerably, we began to feel the true breeze, when the schooner, even under the short and ill-set canvas we had been able to give her, at once increased her speed to about six knots. At the same time, however, she began to "gripe" most villainously, and with the helm hard a-weather it was as much as I could possibly do to keep her from running ashore among the bushes on our starboard hand. The people in the cabin were still pertinaciously blazing ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood

... plainly that he was in my power; it's apt to make sprats of his size flounce desperately, in the mere hope of proving themselves whales after all, if it's only to their miserable selves. Never mind; he can't break my tackle; and besides, that gripe of the hand seemed to indicate that the poor wretch was beat, and thought himself let off easily—as indeed he is. We'll hope so. Now, zoophytes, for another ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley

... one—"travel," said another—"along with us," said the third. By this time I saw some looking particularly fierce upon me; then they began to whisper in each others ears certain secret words, and to look at me; at length the whispering ceased, and each laying his gripe upon me they raised me upon their shoulders, as we do a knight of the shire, and then away with me they flew like the wind, over houses and fields, cities and kingdoms, seas and mountains; and so quickly did they fly that I could fasten my sight upon nothing, and what ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne

... with Harris. Nearly two hundred hours (as we had calculated it) had we walked the ship's deck together, at anchor watch, when all hands were below, and talked over and over every subject which came within the ken of either of us. He gave me a strong gripe with his hand; and I told him, if he came to Boston again, not to fail to find me out, and let me see an old watchmate. The same boat brought on board S——, my friend, who had begun the voyage with me from Boston, and, like me, was going back to his family and to the society which ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana

... cried the trembling Harwold, quaking under the gripe of Thaddeus, and shrinking from the terrible brightness of his eye,—"my lord! my lord, ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter

... me to and fro, with his septuagenarian gripe on my collar, as if instead of a patient much bored friend, I was his deadly enemy. When he let go, I found myself in a ring of spectators. 'Shame, shame! to insult an old man like him!' was the general cry. 'Young puppy!' said an elderly merchant, whose good opinion ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various

... as to how I should encompass it; but for the life of me I could think of no other way than to gripe the creature in my hands, and squeeze it to death. If I could have made sure of getting a proper hold of it—that is, with my fingers round its throat, so that it could not turn its teeth upon me—then the thing would be easy enough. But therein lay the difficulty. I should have to ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid

... involuntary muscular contraction stole over him, and his terrible dying grasp held the poor girl as if she were wedged in an engine of torture. She pressed her lips together and sat still. The inexorable hand held her tighter and tighter, until she felt as if her own slender fingers would be crushed in its gripe. It was one of the tortures of the Inquisition she was suffering, and she could not stir from her place. Then, in her great anguish, she, too, cast her eyes upon that dying figure, and, looking upon its pierced hands and feet and side and lacerated forehead, she ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)

... their homage to the lofty gallows, And he himself lies in captivity. Be rul'd by me, and we will rule the realm: In any case take heed of childish fear, For now we hold an old wolf by the ears, That, if he slip, will seize upon us both, And gripe the sorer, being grip'd himself. Think therefore, madam, that imports us much To erect your son with all the speed we may, And that I be protector over him: For our behoof, 'twill bear the greater sway Whenas a king's name shall ...
— Edward II. - Marlowe's Plays • Christopher Marlowe

... up for my destiny, and the one had worked out the other. But had I? When that devilish suggestion came to me on the bank, did I entertain it? Have I not said how I grasped at the great idea of a God, and held it with a death-gripe in the midst of assault? How did I come in the water? I did not plunge nor fall. No shock of horror chilled me; no remembrance of a voluntary assent to the Tempter could I recall. I was there, it was true; but was I guilty? Did I, in the eyes of any watching ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various

... no swelling muscles, no abundant thews and wide-spreading shoulders. They exhibited, rather, an elemental economy of nature, such as the cave-men must have exhibited. But there was strength in those meagre bodies, the ferocious, primordial strength to clutch and gripe and tear and rend. When they spring upon their human prey they are known even to bend the victim backward and double its body till the back is broken. They possess neither conscience nor sentiment, and they will kill for a half-sovereign, without ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London

... a dispute with a man with whom he had previously been on friendly terms, they proceeded to blows; in the scuffle, the boy, the son of Ian's adversary, observing the two combatants locked in a close and firm gripe of eager contention, and being doubtful of the event, ran into the house and brought out the iron pot-crook, with which he saluted the head of the unfortunate Ian so severely, that he not only relinquished his combat, but departed this life on ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous

... First—"Ken ye a John Ape? If I have Jacko by the collar, I can make him bite you; but, if you have Jacko, you can make him bite me." Just such a creature was Barere. In the hands of the Girondists he would have been eager to proscribe the Jacobins; he was just as ready, in the gripe of the Jacobins, to proscribe the Girondists. On the fidelity of such a man the heads of the Mountain could not, of course, reckon; but they valued their conquest as the very easy and not very delicate lover in Congreve's lively song valued the conquest of a ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... and on the other side brute force, impenetrable obstinacy, and unfeeling insolence, can imagine the sensations that then passed through my mind. I saw treachery triumphant and enthroned; I saw the sinews of innocence crumbled into dust by the gripe of ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin

... cupboards turned inside out, as in a time of general sack and pillage; but the most woful sight was the widow of Yan Yost Vanderscamp, extended a corpse on the floor of the blue-chamber, with the marks of a deadly gripe on the wind-pipe. ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving

... that crab there. See if you can't haul His backward progress to this spar of a ship Thrown up and sunk into the sand here. Clip His clipping feelers hard, and give him all Your hand to gripe at: he'll take care not fall: So,—but with heed, for you are like to slip In stepping on the plank's sea-slime. Your lip— No wonder—curves in mirth at the slow drawl Of the squat creature's legs. We've quite a shine Of waves round us, and here there comes a wind ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various

... deep; but there were no full-swelling muscles, no wide-spreading shoulders, no clean-limbed straightness, no generous symmetry of outline. It represented strength, that body of my father's, strength without beauty; ferocious, primordial strength, made to clutch and gripe and ...
— Before Adam • Jack London

... the miracle of adding a cubit to the stature, worse than the brazier of live coals brought close to the naked soles of the feet,—an instrument which, instead of trifling with the nerves, would clutch all the nerve-centres and the heart itself in its gripe, and hold them until it got its answer, if the white lips had life enough left to shape one. And here was this unfortunate maiden lady smiling at him, setting her limited attractions in their best light, pleading ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... the most mettlesome of thoroughbreds; but when it comes to talk thereof, they strive in vain for adequate power of language. The best words and the strongest sentences will not come. These demand the clarion roundness and ring essentially masculine—very virile indeed. The muscular gripe of a man—not the white, tapering fingers of any maiden—held the pen which wrote so gloriously of Livingstone's terrible riding, of Royston Keene's bloody sabre charges. We know it by unerring instinct, as we could tell a morsel of the smooth cheek of the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... Why, it was only last week that Gripe, the attorney, recovered two cottages for him ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... astonished soldier, disclosed also Roland's features to him, and he fairly yelled with joy at the sight. "'Tarnal death to me!" he roared, first leaping into the air and cracking' his heels together, then snatching at Roland's hand, which he clutched and twisted with the gripe of a bear, and then cracking his heels together again, "'tarnal death to me, sodger, but I know'd it war you war in a squabblification! I heard the cracking and the squeaking; "'Tarnal death to me!' says I, 'thar's Injuns!' And then I thought, and says I, '"Tarnal death to ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird

... by storm the 'classics' of the art, instead of adhering exclusively as of old to their own fantasies and jeux de marteaux. One composition after another by the great masters is seized upon and worried. If they were things of flesh and blood, and could feel the gripe, be conscious of the teeth, and appreciate the fangs of these rapid-devouring 'virtuosi,' concertos, sonatas, trios, etc., would indeed be in a pitiable condition. Happily, being of the spirit, they bleed ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee

... the night-lamp was dying on the black circular stand in the middle of the dormitory: day had already broken. How I pity those whom mental pain stuns instead of rousing! This morning the pang of waking snatched me out of bed like a hand with a giant's gripe. How quickly I dressed in the cold of the raw dawn! How deeply I drank of the ice- cold water in my carafe! This was always my cordial, to which, like other dram-drinkers, I had eager recourse ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... have yet many among us can gripe as hard as Cassibelan: I do not say, I am one; but I have a hand.—Why tribute? Why should we pay tribute? If Caesar can hide the sun from us with a blanket, or put the moon in his pocket, we will pay him tribute for light; else, Sir, no more ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon

... found the mate and seized him, while Atwell and Church came down and struck him with a pump break and a club; he was then dragged upon deck; they called for Dawes to come to them, and as he came up the mate seized his hand, and gave him a death gripe! three of them then hove him overboard, but which three Dawes does not know; the mate when cast overboard was not dead, but called after them twice while in the water! Dawes says he was so frightened that he hardly knew what to do. They then requested him to call Talbot, who was ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms

... The daily quest for food continued. The meat-man rarely proved a success, but the ash-cans were there, and if they did not afford a meat-supply, at least they were sure to produce potato-skins that could be used to allay the gripe of ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton

... the inner room. The Baron, in his boots, lay upon the bed, his body bent almost double by the unrelenting gripe of a distressful pain. His teeth were tightly clenched, and the rigid muscles around the mouth distorted the natural expression of his face. Every few seconds a prolonged groan escaped him. His fine eyes rolled piteously. Anon, he would press both hands upon his abdomen ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various

... part is called the Ploughes principall hale, and doth belong to the left hand being a long bent peece of woode, some what strong in the midst, and so slender at the vpper end that a man may easily gripe it, which being fixed with ...
— The English Husbandman • Gervase Markham

... when they talk of him they shake their heads, And whisper one another in the ear; And he that speaks doth gripe the hearer's wrist, Whilst he that hears makes fearful action With wrinkled brows, with nods, ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate

... you can occupy is but half a step from the veriest poverty; but still it is half a step from it. If all that I can urge be ineffectual, let her who seldom calls to you in vain, let the call of pride prevail with you. You know how you feel at the iron gripe of ruthless oppression: you know how you bear the galling sneer of contumelious greatness. I hold you out the conveniences, the comforts of life, independence, and character, on the one hand; I tender you civility, dependence, and wretchedness, on the other. I will not insult your ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... our Hieland hills, my leddy? Come, cheer up-trust me, ye'll find as warm hearts among them as ony ye ha'e left in your fine English policies"—shaking her delicate fingers in his hard muscular gripe as he spoke. ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier

... most striking objects in the first casino was a group by Bernini,—Pluto, an outrageously masculine and strenuous figure, heavily bearded, ravishing away a little, tender Proserpine, whom he holds aloft, while his forcible gripe impresses itself into her soft virgin flesh. It is very disagreeable, but it makes one feel that Bernini was a man of great ability. There are some works in literature that bear an analogy to his works in sculpture, when great power is ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... hope! the drunkard's heart is hard as stone, No grief disturbs his selfish, sensual joy; His wife may weep, his starving children groan, And Poverty with cruel gripe annoy. He neither hears, nor heeds their famish'd moan, The glorious wine-cup owns no base alloy. Surrounded by a low, degraded train, His fiendish laugh defiance bids to pain; He hugs the cup—more dear than friends to ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... the muttered answer, as Mrs. Manners clutched the child—a little, thin-limbed, cunning-eyed girl, of eight or ten years old—and pressed her to her breast, with a strain more like the gripe of a lioness than a ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)

... palm, with Homer, Virgil and our Milton; though unlike bright Patroclus and the peerless Lycidas, the subject of the eulogy had not suffered change when it was penned. The eulogy in question compared Ralph to Demosthenes, and said that he must go on in his high course, and gripe the palm from Graecia's greatest son; and that from the obscure shades of private life, his devoted Tumles would watch the culmination of his genius, and rejoice to reflect that they had formerly partaken of lambs-wool together ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke

... nose with such force that the creature staggered and sank to the ground, thus allowing Tom to get back his club. Before, however, either of them could repeat the blow, the seal, recovering, again dashed at Tom, who had to leap out of its way, narrowly escaping an ugly gripe on the leg. Willy had again loaded, but was afraid to fire lest he might hit either of the seamen. The seal now stopped, seeming doubtful at which of his assailants he should next rush. When they stopped the creature stopped also; and directly they ...
— The Voyages of the Ranger and Crusader - And what befell their Passengers and Crews. • W.H.G. Kingston

... above Reigning with sway supreme, and oft they hold High revels: mid the Monastery's gloom, The sacrifice is spread, when the grave voice Episcopal, proclaims approaching day Of visitation, or Churchwardens meet To save the wretched many from the gripe Of eager Poverty, or mid thy halls Of London, mighty Mayor! rich Aldermen, Of coming feast hold converse. Otherwhere, For tho' allied in nature as in blood, They hold divided sway, his brother lifts His spungy sceptre. In the noble domes Of Princes, and ...
— Poems, 1799 • Robert Southey

... No affliction of Providence, which, while it scourged us, cut off the sources of resuscitation! No! This damp of death is the mere effusion of British amity! We sink under the pressure of their support! We writhe under their perfidious gripe! They have embraced us with their protecting arms, and lo! these are ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... Mansfield[121] chill thy soul with fear? Dost thou, fond man, believe thyself secure Because thou'rt honest, and because thou'rt poor? Dost thou on law and liberty depend? Turn, turn thy eyes, and view thy injured friend. 80 Art thou beyond the ruffian gripe of Power, When Wilkes, prejudged, is sentenced to the Tower? Dost thou by privilege exemption claim, When privilege is little more than name? Or to prerogative (that glorious ground On which state scoundrels oft have safety found) Dost thou pretend, and there ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill

... port. Where I must Caesar's message loud proclaim And my strong obligation to you voice. Our noble functions must be so performed, That happy impress graves the rabble mind But thus to meet these vultures with a smile Doth like a colic make mine honor gripe, Machiavelian methods were in sooth The better physic for the patients' needs And I like good physician must the probe Thrust in and sound the ugly, gaping wound. Quezox: Most noble sire, if I may caution speak ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)

... equal friendship, and calling no man master—and when we are elated with noble joy at the sight of slaves— when the soul retires in the cool communion of the night, and surveys its experience, and has much ecstasy over the word and deed that put back a helpless innocent person into the gripe of the gripers or into any cruel inferiority—when those in all parts of these states who could easier realise the true American character, but do not yet[1]—when the swarms of cringers, suckers, doughfaces, lice of politics, planners of sly involutions ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman

... were in that far tool-house, an' it was nobody's business to see to 'em. I reckon Master Tom told Harry to feed 'em, but there's no countin' on Harry; he's an offal creatur as iver come about the primises, he is. He remembers nothing but his own inside—an' I wish it'ud gripe him." ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot

... met with, in which a writer's thought reflects itself upon paper so immediately and sensitively as in these studies. To read them is to look into the man's mind, and see its quality and action. The penetration, the subtlety, the tenacity; the stubborn gripe which he lays upon his subject, like that of Hercules upon the slippery Old Man of the Sea; the clear and cool common-sense, controlling the audacity of a rich and ardent imagination; the humorous gibes and strange expletives ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... beating, seized her foot, never waited for her to spring, but went to work at once, and with a powerful and sustained effort raised her slowly and carefully like a dead weight, and settled her in the saddle. His gripe hurt her foot. She bore it like a Spartan sooner than lose the amusement of his simplicity and enormous strength, so drolly and unnecessarily exerted. It cost her a little struggle not to laugh right out, but she turned her head away from him a moment and was quit ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade

... asked what that meant? 'Sir,' replied the ambassador, 'this herb is of that nature, that if you handle it gently without squeezing, it will emit a pleasant and grateful scent; but if you squeeze and gripe it, 'twill not only lose its colour, but it will become productive of scorpions in a little time."—The Entertainer: London, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 193, July 9, 1853 • Various

... lance, And wear curled periwigs, and chalk their face And still are poring on their pocket-glass; Tired with pinned ruffs and fans and partlet strips And busks and verdingales about their hips; And tread on corked stilts, a prisoner's pace, And make their napkin for a spitting place, And gripe their waist within a narrow span, Fond Caenis that wouldst ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... he is uprooting a huge tree, all unconscious that another figure is laboring at his side. It is not Eve, who sits in the background with her first-born at her breast and her distaff by her side,—but Death, who, with a huge lever in his bony gripe, goes at his work with a fierce energy which puts the efforts of his muscular companion to shame. The people of Holbein's day not only saw in this subject the beginning of that toil which is the lot of humankind, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various

... you shall answer my question!' exclaimed her tormentor; and he attempted to extort the confession by shaking her, and remorselessly crushing her slight arms in the gripe of ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte

... responding, and then followed a gospel of love and comfort. She could not catch every word, but there was a sense of promised peace and comfort, which began to soothe the fluttering heart, for the first time enjoying a respite from the immediate gripe of deadly terror. ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge

... novels, published a few months ago, he has the insolence to insult Hungary in the presence of one of her sons. He makes his great braggart, Coeur de Lion, fling a Magyar over his head. Ha! it was well for Richard that he never felt the gripe of a Hungarian. I wish the braggart could have felt the gripe of me, who am 'a' magyarok kozt legkissebb,' the least among the Magyars. I do hate that Scott, and all his vile gang of Lowlanders and Highlanders. ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow

... crimes with his blood. He for a time expected a death like that of his unhappy predecessors, Edward the Second and Richard the Second. But he was in no danger of such treason. Those who had him in their gripe were not midnight stabbers. What they did they did in order that it might be a spectacle to heaven and earth, and that it might be held in everlasting remembrance. They enjoyed keenly the very scandal which they gave. That the ancient constitution ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... argue them before these wicked and crafty men, as touching thy belief, are but manifest excuses to get thee into their power, from which they mean not to liberate thee but by the fire that shall consume thy body, and free it for ever from their murderous gripe. Thou knowest, too, that Sir Roger beareth thee a malice, and hath used all subtlety that he might have wherewith to seek occasion against thee. Didst thou not rebuke him openly for his irreverence, when that he must needs play with his puppy, that had its collar full of bells, during ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... and rush heavenward, saw nothing of the outer world: between her and a sister soul in mortal agony, hung the curtains of her eyelids. But there were no shutters to her ears, and in at their portals all of a sudden darted a great and bitter cry, as from a heart in the gripe of a fierce terror. She had been so absorbed, and it so startled and shook her, that she never could feel certain whether the cry she heard was of this world or not. Half-asleep one hears such a cry, and can not tell whether it entered ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald

... very plentifully upon it himself, would now and then throw me a Bone that was but half picked for my Encouragement; but upon my Being unsuccessful in two or three Chaces, he gave me such a confounded Gripe in his Anger, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... nothing more than rent for money; as rent was no better than Usury for land. The legal interest was then "ten in the hundred;" but the thirty, the fifty, and the hundred for the hundred, the gripe of Usury, and the shameless contrivances of the money-traders, these he would attribute to the follies of others, or ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli

... will not again return; the dead sleeps now without a witness. I may lay this working brain upon the bosom that loves me, and not start at night and think that the soft hand around my neck is the hangman's gripe. Back to thyself, henceforth and forever, my busy heart! Let not thy secret stir from its gloomy depth! The seal is on the tomb; henceforth be the spectre laid. Yes, I must smooth my brow, and teach my lip restraint, ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Head-winds set in, increasing to a gale, and the wretched brigantine, her sails close-reefed, tossed among the savage billows at the mercy of the storm. A heavy sea rolled down upon her, and threw her on her side. The surges broke over her, and, clinging with desperate gripe to spars and cordage, the drenched voyagers gave up all for lost. At length she righted. The gale subsided, the wind changed, and the crazy, water-logged vessel again ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... efface all traces and memory of my degradation. Was not I struck by two vile slaves, who will babble through the city? Was not I held down by an executioner? These arms, which have wound round the master of the world, and no other, polluted by his gripe." ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat

... certain sympathy in the undebased human mind, it was the hope to restore the fallen fortunes of his ancient house, and repossess himself of the long alienated lands that surrounded the dismal wastes of the mouldering hall. And now to hear that those lands were getting into the inexorable gripe of Levy—tears of bitterness stood in ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... violently open, and Clarence Linden stood within three paces of the reprobates and their prey. The taller villain had a miniature in his hand, and the old man clung to his legs with a convulsive but impotent clasp; the other fellow had already his gripe upon Talbot's neck, and his right hand grasped ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... 'twere! Hang it, they must be some poor drunken game-cocks fallen to sparring—'twere pity almost we should find them—the penalty is chopping off a hand, is it not?—'twere hard to lose hand for handling a bit of steel, that comes so natural to one's gripe." ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott

... change of base. He had no idea that I should really act upon his suggestion, but I did. I bundled the sugar into my pocket with a grim satisfaction; and Halicarnassus paid his thirty cents, looking—and feeling, as he afterwards told me—as if a policeman's gripe were on his shoulders. If any restaurant in Boston recollects having been astonished at any time during the summer of 1862 by an unaccountably empty sugar-bowl, I take this occasion to explain the phenomenon. I gave the sugar afterwards to a little ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various



Words linked to "Gripe" :   kvetch, crab, squawk, bellyache, holler, kick, plain, grouse, beef, bitch



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