Groove

How to spell groove

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce groove

What does groove mean?

1. nounA long, narrow channel or furrow cut into a surface.
2. nounA steady, satisfying rhythm in music that makes people want to move.

Groove in a sentence

• The sliding door runs along a metal groove in the floor.

• The bass line laid down a deep, steady groove for the whole track.

• He cut a shallow groove into the plank so the shelf would sit flush.

• Once the drummer found the groove, the band relaxed and played for hours.

Where does groove come from?

Language of origin: Dutch

Groove came into English in the 1650s from the Dutch word groeve, which meant a furrow, a ditch, or a pit dug into the ground, and is closely related to the older Germanic root that also gives us the English word grave. The earliest English uses were technical and physical, describing a long narrow channel cut into wood, stone, or metal, especially in mining and joinery. From that literal sense of a cut track, the word naturally extended to the spiral channel cut into a vinyl record, the path along which a phonograph needle travels. From the record-playing sense came the twentieth-century slang meaning of being 'in the groove', that is, settled into a smooth, satisfying rhythm, which jazz and later popular music turned into a noun for an infectious musical beat. The spelling trap is simple but real: the long 'oo' is written with a double o and the word ends in a single silent e, so it is groove rather than 'grove' or 'gruve'.

How the word is built

• groove (a single root from Dutch groeve meaning furrow or channel; no prefix or suffix)