Definition of "grapper"
grapper
noun
plural grappers
A metal ring or leather strap on the base of a lance behind the grip, designed to stop the lance from moving backward by catching on the lance rest or on the lancer's chest and arm when the lance was tucked into the armpit.
Quotations
[Grappers] were first introduced in the early fourteenth century and became standard after the introduction of the lance-rest in the late 1300s. A description of the grapper as it was configured in 1446 is provided in an anonymous French manuscript as follows: Item, the said grappers are intentionally full of sharp little spikes like little diamonds, similar in size to little ...
2010, Noel Fallows, Jousting in Medieval and Renaissance Iberia, Boydell Press, page 119
But do not joust (to break) fifty or sixty or one hundred lances as you are accustomed to do. To avoid such unpleasantries as severe injuries […] The grapper or (in its earlier name) grate was affixed to the lance behind the grip.
2020, Alan V. Murray, Karen Watts, The Medieval Tournament as Spectacle: Tourneys, Jousts and Pas D'armes, 1100-1600, Boydell & Brewer, page 80
(obsolete) A grappling hook or grappling iron.
Quotations
Then began a sore battle on both parts: archers and cross-bows began to shoot, and men of arms approached and fought hand to hand, and the better to come together they had great hooks and grappers of iron to cast out of one ship into another, and so tied them fast together.
1905 (quoting an older work?), Essentials in Medieval and Modern History, page 230