Grope \Grope\, v. t. 1. To search out by feeling in the dark; as, we groped our way at midnight.
2. To examine; to test; to sound. [Obs.] --Chaucer.
Felix gropeth him, thinking to have a bribe. --Genevan Test. (Acts xxiv. ).
Grope \Grope\ (gr[=o]p), v. i. [imp. & p. p. {Groped} (gr[=o]pt); p. pr. & vb. n. {Groping}.] [OE. gropen, gropien, grapien, AS. gr[=a]pian to touch, grope, fr. gr[imac]pan to gripe. See {Gripe}.] 1. To feel with or use the hands; to handle. [Obs.]
2. To search or attempt to find something in the dark, or, as a blind person, by feeling; to move about hesitatingly, as in darkness or obscurity; to feel one's way, as with the hands, when one can not see.
We grope for the wall like the blind. --Is. lix. 10.
To grope a little longer among the miseries and sensualities ot a worldly life. --Buckminster.
Mr. Green estimates that, as consumers and manufacturers grope their way, the current economy is flat.
And it gives one tourist a chance to watch Soviet officials grope along the shifting frontier between the new candor and the old lies.
However, he said, "we feel the uptick in orders is still significant." As the trans-Atlantic allies grope toward a post-Cold War partnership, worries about U.S.-European trade frictions seem to overshadow many of the discussions.
But otherwise he will go to the Soviet Union for another round with Shevardnadze in mid-May that produce ideas for a new Europe even as they grope for a framework for a strategic weapons reduction treaty.