get to grips with
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
To understand and control something difficult
Literally: hold something firmly
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
Well okay, those of you who liked the Shakespeare better, for whatever reasons, even if it's just because you didn't get to grips with Johnson, which of the plays, first of all, erm did you find most interesting?
This is not a good weekend to be entertaining visitors or for getting to grips with a backlog of personal or professional paperwork.
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-30; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “get to grips with” mean?
To understand and control something difficult Literally: hold something firmly
Is “get to grips with” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.