Word Direct Answers

What does "grasp" mean?

Grasp: To lay hold of with the mind; to become thoroughly acquainted or conversant with; to comprehend.

Additional senses

  1. 2.To effect a grasp; to make the motion of grasping; to clutch; to struggle; to strive. As one that grasped And tugged for life and was by strength subdued. Shak. To grasp at, to catch at; to try to seize; as, Alexander grasped at universal empire,
  2. 3.A gripe or seizure of the hand; a seizure by embrace, or infolding in the arms. "The grasps of love." Shak.
  3. 4.Reach of the arms; hence, the power of seizing and holding; as, it was beyond his grasp.
  4. 5.Forcible possession; hold. The whole space that's in the tyrant's grasp. Shak.
  5. 6.Wide-reaching power of intellect to comprehend subjects and hold them under survey. The foremost minds of the next . . . era were not, in power of grasp, equal to their predecessors. Z. Taylor.
  6. 7.The handle of a sword or of an oar.

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