grope

You open your eyes and grope for your phone.

From New York Times ● Apr. 21, 2024

Any extra light here is risky so we grope our way through the compound, following the heavily armed troops sent to escort us - stepping around makeshift tents, debris and sleeping people.

From BBC ● Nov. 16, 2023

One thing is certain: We do need a place where we can grope toward shared understanding of world events.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 20, 2023

If Mr. Biden makes concessions — we grope for a better word — to MBS, it would be on behalf of others as well as himself.

From Washington Post ● May 21, 2022

But you’re so scared you can’t open your eyes, so you get on your hands and knees and grope in the dark, listening for voices to tell you which way to go.

From "The Joy Luck Club" by Amy Tan

Partly that’s because most corporate media wouldn’t have carried Hedges’ denunciation of everything it gropes us for.

From Salon ● Mar. 4, 2019

He slams on the brakes, opens the door, gropes for his cane.

From The New Yorker ● Dec. 10, 2018

He gropes for his water glass as if lifting heavy furniture.

From The Guardian ● Dec. 3, 2018

The agency reeks of desperation as it gropes for some rationale for human spaceflight beyond the weirdly circular we-need-to-put-humans-in-space-to-study-what-happens-to-humans-when-we-put-them-in-space logic it's used for the past four decades.

From Slate ● Feb. 6, 2014

Starry gropes after the material that's been yanked from her hands, but it falls out of reach and the whole quilt tumbles down the chute.

From "You Bring the Distant Near" by Mitali Perkins

The board groped its way through early decisions.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 11, 2026

A Loudoun County jury found former superintendent Scott Ziegler guilty of unlawfully discharging a teacher who reported being repeatedly groped by a student.

From Washington Times ● Sep. 29, 2023

In 2018, Fraser said he was groped in 2003 by longtime Hollywood Foreign Press Association member Philip Berk.

From Seattle Times ● Jan. 9, 2023

Mr Johnson faced criticism for being too slow to suspend Mr Pincher from the parliamentary party, following allegations he had groped two men in a private members' club.

From BBC ● Dec. 14, 2022

I concentrated on the pencil and groped for something.

From "Anthem of a Reluctant Prophet" by Joanne Proulx

She’s also spinning an intergenerational tale of Black women groping past their initial distrust to a deeper understanding of what they have in common.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 19, 2026

Vandier said AI is turning military intelligence analysis from a task of groping in darkness for targets to one of sifting through piles of them.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 7, 2026

Such people are groping for answers and meaning.

From Salon ● Feb. 25, 2025

Mark Wood, in his first match since March because of injury and the weather, hurled a 95mph delivery that had Muhammad Rizwan groping at fresh air.

From BBC ● May 30, 2024

The next minute she was holding her head, her eyes squeezed shut, groping for the sofa, and then crumpling softly to the floor with fluttering hands.

From "The Joy Luck Club" by Amy Tan