Noun: grasp
| Singular | grasp |
| Plural | grasps |
Sample Sentences
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A vagrant gust of wind snatched the note from my grasp.
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in the tyrant's grasp
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What the anvil? what dread grasp.
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Dare its deadly terrors clasp! [1826, William Blake, “The Tyger”, in Songs of Innocence and of Experience:]
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Turning back, then, toward the basement staircase, she began to grope her way through blinding darkness, but had taken only a few uncertain steps when, of a sudden, she stopped short and for a little stood like a stricken thing, quite motionless save that she quaked to her very marrow in the grasp of a great and enervating fear. [1914 November, Louis Joseph Vance, “An Outsider […]”, in Munsey’s Magazine, volume LIII, number II, New York, N.Y.: The Frank A[ndrew] Munsey Company, […], published 1915, →OCLC, chapter III (Accessory After the Fact), page 382, column 1:]
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If a mirror does slip from your grasp, do not attempt to catch it. Just get out of the way. [1980, Robert M. Jones, editor, Walls and Ceilings, Time-Life Books, →ISBN, page 44:]
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There is for the mind but one grasp of happiness: from that uppermost pinnacle of wisdom, whence we see that this world is well designed. [1859, George Meredith, chapter 13, in The Ordeal of Richard Feverel. A History of Father and Son. […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), London: Chapman and Hall, →OCLC:]
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The goal is within my grasp.
Nouns inflected like grasp
soldier's woundwort,
Nicosian,
whopper,
greypate,
tactile sign language,
chronotrope,
Rosie Lee,
dissentient,
photoinactivator,
sulphonediimine,
coastal waterfall,
residuary devise,
bituminization,
nitrosonaphthol,
smṛiti,
geosphere,
backscreen,
mensuralist,
flocculate,
flocculant, etc. (List truncated at 20 nouns)
Etymology
1. From Middle English graspen, grapsen, craspen (“to grope; feel around”), from Old English *grǣpsian, from Proto-West Germanic *graipisōn, from Proto-Germanic *graipisōną, from Proto-Indo-European *gʰrebʰ- (“to take, seize, rake”), the same ultimate source as grab.
2. Cognate with Saterland Frisian grapsje (“to grab, grasp”), German Low German grapsen (“to grab; grasp”), German grapsen and grapschen, Old English grāpian ("to touch, feel, grasp"; > Modern English grope). Compare also Swedish krafsa (“to scatch; scabble”), Norwegian krafse (“to scramble”). See: Old English Nouns '
*grǣpsian', Old English Nouns '
grāpian', English Nouns '
grope'.