✅ Grasp means to hold something firmly (I grasped the handle).

✅ Clutch means to hold something tightly (I clutched her hand as we rode the rollercoaster).

✅ Grasp suggests a firm and secure, but not tight, hold. Grasp also often suggests a reassuring or comforting hold (My father grasped my hand to stop it from shaking).

✅ Clutch suggests a tight, even overly tight, hold, often due to emotions like anxiety or fear (He clutched my hand as we walked through the dark room).

✅ Opportune means suitable or appropriate, often in regard to timing (an opportune remark).

✅ Felicitous means fitting, apt, or appropriate (You brought me a coffee at a felicitous moment).

✅ These words have very similar meanings, but they have different connotations.

✅ Felicitous suggests some element of luck or chance, whereas opportune suggests timeliness in a way that doesn’t rely on chance (a felicitous change in the weather; The note came at an opportune time).

✅ Shelter means to protect, especially from or as if from bad weather, attack, or similar (I shelter stray animals).

✅ Harbor means to offer refuge or protection to a person or to a feeling in the mind (He’d been harboring doubt about his cousin for years).

✅ Both shelter and harbor can also mean to conceal, hide, or illicitly protect people who are in danger.

✅ Harbor is used more often in this sense than shelter (She was known to shelter runaways; The community harbored criminals).