gripping

Pluralgrippings

1. 1
   adjective

   Holding your attention so completely that it is hard to look away; thoroughly exciting.

   The murder trial made for gripping television over several weeks.

   Critics praised the novel's gripping final chapters and its sudden reversals.

   Similarexciting, fascinating, interesting, absorbing, compelling

   Oppositeboring, dull, tedious

   Note

   Here the participle has become a true adjective, and you can tell because it grades: a more gripping film, the most gripping chapter. A verb cannot be graded like that. So "the match was gripping" describes its effect on the audience, while "the climber was gripping the rope" is the participle of grip, taking an object. Absorbing and fascinating are near neighbors, but gripping keeps the image of a hand holding tight.

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of grip.

   The climber was gripping the rock face with both hands.

   Gripping the steering wheel hard, the driver braced for the impact.

   Note

   The -ing form carries every meaning of grip, not just the hand's. Fear can be gripping a city, a story gripping its readers, and in dialect gripping can mean trenching or draining land. It works with an object (gripping the rail) or without one (tires gripping on a wet road). As a gerund it can head a phrase of its own: gripping too hard tires the hand.

3. 3
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The action of taking firm hold of something.

   The gripping of the climbing holds requires significant hand strength.

   A secure gripping of the railing kept him upright on the icy steps.

   Similargrasping, clutching, holding

   Note

   As a true noun it can be counted and described, which the gerund cannot. Stendhal, in a 1949 edition edited by Somerset Maugham, writes of "almost convulsive grippings of his hand." The gerund takes its object directly (gripping his hand). The noun needs of and can take an adjective (a convulsive gripping of his hand). That difference is the quickest way to tell which one you are reading.

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