Other forms: gripes, griping, griped
To gripe is to complain persistently about small things. Gripe about the weather, stop griping, a list of gripes.
It is informal and dismissive of the complainer — calling a complaint a gripe says it is petty. As a noun a gripe is the complaint itself, and my only gripe is a standard formula in reviews. Gripe water is the old remedy for infant colic, from an older sense meaning a griping pain in the gut. Note that gripe and grip come from the same word about grasping.
1verbgripeTo complain persistently about small things.
“He's always griping about the weather, whatever it's like.”
2nounpettyA petty complaint.
“My only gripe about the hotel was the slow Wi-Fi.”
gripe is a complaint.
Old English gripan means to grasp, and grip comes from the same root. The complaining sense grew from the older one of a griping pain, something gripping the gut.
Proto-Indo-European
*gʰreyb- — to grab, grasp
Proto-Germanic
*grīpaną
Old English
grīpan
Middle English
gripen
English, today
gripe
From Middle English gripen, from Old English grīpan, from Proto-Germanic grīpaną, from Proto-Indo-European gʰreyb- (“to grab, grasp”). Cognate with West Frisian gripe, Low German griepen, Dutch grijpen, German greifen, Danish gribe, Norwegian Bokmål gripe, Norwegian Nynorsk and Swedish gripa, Icelandic grípa. See also grip, grope.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire