1868 G. J. Whyte-Melville White Rose I. x. 121 I shouldn't like to be a ‘Grabby’..I'd rather be a private in the cavalry than an officer in the regiment of feet!

1916 Chambers's Jrnl. Jan. 11/1 Being about five miles out from the shore, we knew that the local ‘grabbies’ would not see us.

1919 ‘Etienne’ Strange Tales from Fleet 123 ‘Do you mean the grabby's dinner-party we gave?’ inquired the..first lieutenant.

1910 A. Ross in Penguin Dict. Mod. Quots. (1971) 196/1 I don't believe in publishers who wish to butter their bannocks on both sides while they'll hardly allow an author to smell treacle. I consider they are too grabby together and like Methodists they love to keep the Sabbath and everything else they can lay their hands on.

1924 E. Ferber So Big xiv. 245 ‘What's the matter with her hands?’.. ‘They're brown, and awfully thin and sort of—grabby.’

1942 L. V. Berrey & M. Van den Bark Amer. Thes. Slang 279 Avaricious; Greedy, Grabby, a hog for,..on the make, piggy.

1953 E. Hahn J. Brooke vi. 99 James was not particularly patriotic, nor grabby on behalf of Britain.

1970 J. H. Vance Deadly Isles xi. 76 Nice when they don't steal my copra. Some people are pretty grabby.