gripping

Etymology

adj

1. Which catches someone's attention; exciting
   a gripping action film

verb

1. present participle and gerund of grip

noun

1. 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 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