ungraspable

verb (used with object)

1. to seize and hold by or as if by clasping with the fingers or arms.
2. to seize upon; hold firmly.
3. to get hold of mentally; comprehend; understand: I don’t grasp your meaning.

verb (used without object)

4. to make an attempt to seize, or a motion of seizing, something (usually followed by at or for): a drowning man grasping at straws; to grasp for an enemy’s rifle.

noun

5. the act of grasping or gripping, as with the hands or arms: to make a grasp at something.
6. a hold or grip: to have a firm grasp of a rope.
7. one’s arms or hands, in embracing or gripping: He took her in his grasp.
8. one’s power of seizing and holding; reach: to have a thing within one’s grasp.
9. hold, possession, or mastery: to wrest power from the grasp of a usurper.
10. mental hold or capacity; power to understand.
11. broad or thorough comprehension: a good grasp of computer programming.

verb

1. to grip (something) firmly with or as if with the hands
2. (when intr, often foll by at) to struggle, snatch, or grope (for)
3. (tr) to understand, esp with effort

noun

4. the act of grasping
5. a grip or clasp, as of a hand
6. the capacity to accomplish (esp in the phrase within one’s grasp)
7. total rule or possession
8. understanding; comprehension

v.mid-14c., “to reach for, feel around,” possibly a metathesis of grapsen, from Old English *græpsan “to touch, feel,” from Proto-Germanic *grap-, *grab- (cf. East Frisian grapsen “to grasp,” Middle Dutch grapen “to seize, grasp,” Old English grapian “to touch, feel, grope”), from PIE root *ghrebh- (see grab). Sense of “seize” first recorded mid-16c. Figurative use from c.1600; of intellectual matters from 1680s. Related: Grasped; grasping. The noun is from 1560s. In addition to the idiom beginning with grasp

grasp at straws

also see:

get a fix on (grasp of)