come to grips with

verb

"come-to-grips-with" is a 15-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.

The verdict

“come to grips with” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.

Unranked
below top-frequency English
18
letters

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - To confront or deal with directly; to commence a confrontation.

Corpus desk

Index EN-come-to-grips-with · come to grips with · English

come to grips with · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables

  • FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
  • LEN-MEGA 18 letters
  • VOW-5 5 vowels
  • CONFUS-0 No pairs
  • VAR-0 0 variants
  • BOOK-THIN "C" thin
  • PHOTO-UNK Peer pending

Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern

Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.

Key facts for come to grips with
PropertyValue
Headwordcome to grips with
LanguageEnglish
Part of speechVerb
Letters18
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Long-tail rank of “come to grips with” in English

come to grips withsits beyond the 100,000 most-frequent English words, in the long tail of technical, archaic, or otherwise rare vocabulary where spelling doubt tends to strike hardest.

Beyond rank #100,000. Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list.

Rare enough to double-check

come to grips with is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as averb. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "To confront or deal with directly; to commence a confrontation.".

Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for come to grips with, a sign its spelling follows regular English conventions. No confusable counterpart is on file for this word, suggesting its spelling stands apart enough that readers rarely confuse it with something else.

No borrowing history is documented for this entry, so its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct English form is come to grips with, spelled C-O-M-E- -T-O- -G-R-I-P-S- -W-I-T-H.

Definition

  1. 1
    To confront or deal with directly; to commence a confrontation.

Recorded use

Wiktionary examples

These source excerpts show how come to grips with appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.

  1. Until she comes to grips with her mother's death, she has no hope of putting it behind her.
  2. On Thursday, Robert A. Iger, Disney’s chief executive, put the sale of the company’s “noncore” channels, including ABC and FX, on the table. He called the decline in traditional television “a reality we have to come to grips with.”

This word in other languages

Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "come to grips with"?
"come to grips with" is spelled C-O-M-E- -T-O- -G-R-I-P-S- -W-I-T-H.
What does "come to grips with" mean?
As a verb, "come to grips with" means: To confront or deal with directly; to commence a confrontation.
What language does "come to grips with" come from?
"come to grips with" is a English word. PlainSpell's reference spans five languages -- English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German -- with definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data for each.
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Yes, PlainSpell is a completely free word reference. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, confusable pairs, homophones, and spelling corrections across 5 languages without any sign-up or subscription.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list