gropery

plural groperies

1. uncommonGroping; the act of, or an instance of, groping.

   State quacks, bills for Popery, Not for our merits, Lord, we claim, Stage-reminiscences, frolics, and fibs, Exemption from the woe; Lumps, bumps, gall and scull-gropery, We ask it all in Mercy's name, […]

   1831, The Gentleman's Magazine, page 553

   4 more examples

   What the deuce, then, should make you shrink now, when almost all drudgery, and gropery and pokery is over; when you have plenty of materials to produce, and every step will bring you into a more pleasurable country, […]

   1887, Temple Bar: A London Magazine for Town and Country Readers, page 47

   […] including “party gropery” - the brief surreptitious petting that often goes on in gardens, on balconies, and in kitchens — is analogous to the orgiastic festivals in which married people, in preliterate societies, were permitted a brief period of […]

   1969, Morton M. Hunt, The Affair: A Portrait of Extra-marital Love in Contemporary America, Signet Book

   To look over your MS will be pure amusement & gratification to me; & it will be kindness to furnish me with so pleasant a relief from my own faggings, & book-huntings, & groperies, & pokeries, & sweepings, & cobweb-catchings.

   1991 (printed), Thomas Twining, A Selection of Thomas Twining's Letters, 1734-1804: The Record of a Tranquil Life, Edwin Mellen Press, page 257

   She finds this unspeakably funny and barks herself off into the darkness whilst the gropery of her partner goes on apace. Exterior / CHAPEL YARD / Night / Drinking Fountain BEATRICE charges into view, […]

   1993, Kenneth Branagh (screenplay and film notes), William Shakespeare, Much Ado about Nothing, W. W. Norton & Company, page 27