Etymology: Of difficult etymology. According to the evidence of the quots. ‘boy, male child’ seems to be the original sense. The word might conceivably represent an Old English *gróm , < root *grô- of grow v. + Germanic suffix -mo- . But there is no trace of the word in any Germanic language; Middle Dutch and modern Dutch have grom fry of fish, offspring, (jocularly) children; an unauthenticated sense ‘boy, child’ is given by the lexicographers Kilian (‘puer’), Mellema (‘enfant, marmouset’) and Hexham (‘stripling or groome’); but this does not correspond phonologically. The relation, if any, between the English or the Dutch word and Old French gromet grummet n.¹, is unascertained; but in Anglo-Norman and Anglo-Latin documents gromet and its latinized form grometus appear to be used for groom in the senses 3 – 5 below. There appears to be no evidence for an Old French gromme; the grommes quoted by Du Cange is probably for gromez plural of gromet. The alleged Old Norse grómr or gromr ‘man’ has no other authority than its occurrence in the list of poetical appellations applicable to yeomen, in the 14th cent. expansion of Snorra Edda (ed. 1848, II. 496) where it may be from Middle English.

Etymology: ? A western variant of crome n.

Etymology: < groom n.¹