gripping
noun1
The act of forming a grip.
- His resentful comments on this conviction were greeted only by great tears falling in silence, and almost convulsive grippings of his hand.1949, Stendhal [pseudonym; Marie-Henri Beyle], edited by William Somerset Maugham, Stendhal's The Red and the Black, volume 10, page 126:
2
Obsolete Obsolete form of griping (“pinching and spasmodic pain in the intestines”).
- The same Night it began to operate by Grippings and Sweating, and he being bred a Surgeon, took some Medicines to correct the Grippings, which in some Measure the Medicine did, but he lost his Appetite […]1727, Alexander Hamilton, A new account of the East Indies: