I used to think that ‘to get to grips with something’ to come to terms with’ which usually is a process that takes time. How would you explain the use of the idiom in the following sentence though? ‘She hadn’t been on the first floor since she came home, she had got to grips with cooking straight away.’
I mean how does ‘get to grips with’ go together with ‘straight away’?
Hi Torsten,
For me the expression ‘get to grips with’ has a note of urgency and immediacy. The idea is that you ‘cotton on quickly’ to a situation and tackle it straightaway. Someone who is reacting in this way would be described as follows -
It didn’t take him long to get to grips with the situation and take immediate action.
Your interpretation suggests more ‘come to terms with’, which is a slower process. Critics of the British PM is that she doesn’t ‘get a grip’ - incidentally this is a popular Army expression. If the sergeant shouts at you - Get a grip - he wants you to do something NOW!
Alan
Hi Alan, thanks a lot for clarifying this. Interestingly enough, not many useful results come up when you google ‘come to grips vs. come to terms’ which is strange since I would reckon that quite a lot of learners might want to learn the difference between these two expressions.
On another note, did you know that there is the German noun ‘Grips’ you can use in expressions such as ‘Grips haben’?