gripping

adjective

grip·​ping ˈgri-piŋ 

: taking a powerful hold upon one's interest or feelings

a gripping thriller

Shabba Ranks has a gripping baritone voice that ranges from bedroom purr to locker-room-boast roar.

—Mark Coleman

grippingly adverb

a grippingly honest performance

Examples of gripping in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Its interesting that this is directed by an almost exclusively film director, Margaret Brown, who has done such gripping projects like Descendant in the past, and a True Crime series is wildly different. —Paul Tassi, Forbes.com, 7 Aug. 2025

The Full House alum, 43, is starring in a gripping new Lifetime original movie, titled Dateless to Dangerous: My Son’s Secret Life. —Dory Jackson, People.com, 20 June 2025

The four-episode real-time crime drama, released by Netflix in March, follows the unsettling and hugely gripping fallout from a seemingly unthinkable crime. —Kate Erbland, IndieWire, 29 May 2025

Despite its small size (168 pages, including 20 pages of notes in the back), Our Malady is a timely and gripping examination of the state of the healthcare system in the USA as compared to healthcare systems in several European countries. —Grrlscientist, Forbes.com, 24 July 2025

Word History

First Known Use

1896, in the meaning defined above

Rhymes for gripping

• chipping
• clipping
• dipping
• dripping
• flipping
• nipping
• ripping
• shipping
• sipping
• skipping
• slipping
• snipping