gripe

[Alison Murie]

On Oct 18, 2010, at 12:16 PM, Victor Steinbok wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Victor Steinbok <aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      gripe
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>
>  I am most used to the meaning of the verb "gripe" as a version of
> "complain". That seems to correspond to definition 10. of OED "gripe
> v.1" entry.
>
>> 10. intr. To complain, ‘grouse’. So {sm}griping vbl. n. slang (orig.
>> U.S.).
>> 1932 Amer. Speech June 332 Gripe, to complain. 1934 F. SCOTT
>> FITZGERALD Tender is Night II. i. 153 In some moods he griped at his
>> own reasoning: Could I help it. 1940 New Yorker 21 Sept. 37 He got
>> good and sore and griped. 1945 E. FORD Larry Scott v. 51 I've already
>> told him that the newspaper game is a lousy business, so you can save
>> your griping for somebody else. 1947 D. M. DAVIN Gorse blooms Pale
>> 199
>> Old Snow was griping away about his girl turning him down. 1959 Times
>> Lit. Suppl. 20 Nov. 678/1 Let us get the griping over quickly. 1963
>> Time 30 Aug. 18/2 Ike..griped publicly: ‘There are too many of these
>> generals who have all sorts of ideas.’ 1967 Boston Traveler 27/2
>> People are always griping about kids hanging around and being at the
>> wrong places at the wrong time.
>
> The only other subentry that has any pretense of "modern" support
> quotations is #7.
>
>> 7. To grieve, afflict, distress.
>> 1559 Mirr. Mag., Mowbray's Banishm. xxix, Grief gryped me so, I pyned
>> awaye and dyed. 1567 DRANT Horace, Art of Poetry Bvj, Those which
>> inwardly with griefe Are gryped in their minde. 1593 SHAKES. 3 Hen.
>> VI, I. iv. 171 How inly Sorrow gripes his Soule. 1671 J. FLAVEL
>> Fount.
>> Life xxiii. 70 How sick was his conscience as soon as he had
>> swallowed
>> it! It grip'd him to the heart. 1871 B. TAYLOR Faust I. ix. 150 What
>> ails thee? What is 't gripes thee, elf? A face like thine beheld I
>> never. 1905 R. BEACH Pardners (1912) i. 29. It gripes me to hear a
>> man
>> cry. 1941 J. M. CAIN Mildred Pierce (1943) 88 What's griping him is
>> that he can't do anything for the kids.
>
> This appears to be very close to the usage that brought me to look
> it up:
>
> http://bit.ly/9JfINv
>> "I had nothing to do with the filing of the petition. *It really
>> gripes me* that people accuse me of having had something to do with
>> that," Marshall said. "Had I wanted to get this done it would have
>> been done a long time ago. It would not have been brought up at the
>> very last minute."
>
> I don't know how common the expression is in general, but I have never
> heard #7 in the Northeast, although #10 is quite common. I might have
> heard it on TV ... once. Has it become a regionalism? Or is it yet
> again
> just my sheltered existence?
> VS-)
~~~~~~~~~~~~
This usage has been familiar to me all my life, in the midwest, west &
northeast.  I would associate it more with the griping pain of, say,
severe indigestion, than with grief or affliction of the soul.
AM

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