Other forms: grooming, groomed, grooms
The groom is the man getting married — the one in the suit at the front, waiting while everybody turns to look at the bride. The full word is bridegroom, but nobody says it on the day.
A groom is also somebody employed to look after horses: mucking out, brushing down, tacking up before a ride. As a verb, to groom an animal is to clean and comb it, which is why a cat grooming itself and a dog booked in for grooming use the same word, and why well-groomed means neat and carefully turned out. You can groom a person too, in the sense of preparing them for a role: he was groomed to take over the family firm. In news reports the word has a grim, narrow sense as well — to build a child's trust in order to abuse them. The meanings sit far apart, so the sentence around groom has to do the work.
1noungroomA man on his wedding day, or in the period just before or after it.~72%
“The groom forgot the ring and his brother had to run back to the car.”
synonyms: bridegroom
2nounhorseA person employed to look after horses in a stable.~13%
“The groom had the mare saddled and waiting by six in the morning.”
3verbcleanTo clean, brush and tidy an animal's coat.~7%
“She groomed the pony until its coat shone.”
4verbprepareTo prepare somebody carefully for an important job or role.~6%
“He was groomed for the top job from the day he joined.”
5verbbuildTo build a relationship with a child in order to abuse them.~2%
“The court heard how the man had groomed the boy over several months.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 15 sentences found in the wild and placed 15 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Also accepted in games: bridegroom
Groom in the wedding sense is a short form of bridegroom, first recorded in 1604. Bridegroom itself is a mangling of Old English brȳdguma, from brȳd, bride, and guma, man, which goes back to Proto-Germanic gumô and is distantly related to human. Middle English speakers no longer recognised guma, re-heard it as grome, an attendant, and slipped in an r. So the husband-to-be became, by accident of hearing, a kind of servant.
Proto-Indo-European
*dʰǵʰm̥mō
Proto-Germanic
*gumô — man, person
Old English
brȳdguma — bridegroom
Middle English
brydgrome
English, today
groom
Built from
1604, short for bridegroom (“husband-to-be”), from Middle English brydgrome, alteration (with intrusive r) of earlier bridegome (“bridegroom”), from Old English brȳdguma (“bridegroom”), from brȳd (“bride”) + guma (“man, hero”). In Middle English, the second element was re-analyzed as or influenced by grom, grome (“attendant”). guma derives from Proto-Germanic gumô (“man, person”), from Proto-Indo-European dʰǵʰm̥mō; it is cognate to Icelandic gumi (cf. Icelandic brúðgumi) and Norwegian gume and, ultimately, human.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA