| 词组 | groom |
| 释义 | groom A strange prejudice against the use of groom to mean "bridegroom" lingers in a few usage handbooks. The apparent reason for this prejudice is that groom is thought to have associations with the stable, owing to the use of its older homograph in the sense "a person who takes care of horses." The same reasoning might be expected to find fault with the word bridegroom itself, on the grounds that it implies that the bride resembles a horse. Bridegroom has, in fact, been criticized in the past by no less a personage than Noah Webster, who felt that the word should be bridegoom, and who went so far as to enter and define bridegoom in his Dictionary in 1828. Webster's preference for bridegoom had an etymological basis: the Middle English word was bridegome, from the Old English brydguma, a compound of bryd, "bride," and guma, "man." As far as Webster was concerned, bridegroom (which acquired the intrusive r by folk etymology) was a "gross corruption" that ought not be tolerated. In attempting to revive the dead word bridegoom, Webster was fighting a battle that had been lost centuries before. The OED shows that bridegome had fallen into disuse by the end of the 1300s. Bridegroom (originally spelled brydegrome) first appeared in writing some time later, in 1526. The only forms in use thereafter were bridegroom and groom, which was first recorded in Shakespeare's Othello (1604). Both bridegroom and groom were treated as standard in Samuel Johnson's Dictionary in 1755. Webster's attempt to promote bridegoom seems to have had no success at all, but his opinions may perhaps have had some influence in encouraging a prejudice against groom. For whatever reason, that prejudice has now hung on, although barely, for more than 150 years. We recommend that you not take it seriously. The "bridegroom" sense of groom is recognized as standard by all dictionaries, and there is no sensible reason to avoid its use. |
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