Groom

How to spell groom

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce groom

What does groom mean?

1. verbTo clean, brush, and care for the coat of an animal.
2. nounA man on or just before his wedding day.
3. nounA person employed to look after horses.
4. verbTo train or prepare a person for a particular position or role.

Groom in a sentence

• verb

  She likes to groom the pony before every riding lesson.

• noun

  The groom waited nervously at the altar for his bride.

• noun

  The groom mucked out the stalls and fed the horses at dawn.

• verb

  The firm decided to groom her as the next regional director.

• verb

  Cats spend hours each day to groom their own fur.

• noun

  The photographer asked the groom to stand beside his best man.

Where does groom come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The word goes back to the Middle English grom, meaning a boy or a young male servant, which appeared in the 1200s; its ultimate source is genuinely uncertain, so scholars hedge on exactly where it sprang from. By the later medieval period the sense had narrowed to a servant who looks after horses, the meaning that still survives in stables today. From caring for animals, the verb 'to groom' broadened to mean tending and tidying a person's appearance, and in the twentieth century it stretched further to preparing someone for a role or position. The familiar 'bridegroom' is a quirk of folk reshaping: Old English had brydguma, from bryd 'bride' and guma 'man', but once guma fell out of use English speakers swapped in the more familiar 'groom', which is why a man at his wedding is now called a groom even though horses have nothing to do with it. That double 'o' is the spelling point to fix in memory: it rhymes with 'broom' and 'room', not with the single 'o' of 'from'.

How the word is built

• groom (single root; from Middle English grom 'boy, male servant', later 'one who tends horses')