24 March 2025
Most of us probably associate the slang word groovy with 1960s counterculture, but it’s considerably older than that, with the slang sense arising in 1930s jazz jargon. And the metaphorical sense of groove is even older.
Groove was borrowed from the Dutch groeve in the fifteenth century. It is cognate with the noun grave, as a place of burial, which traces back to Old English and on to a common Germanic root. Groove originally meant a mine shaft or pit, but by the mid seventeenth century, the meaning of groove had widened to refer to a channel through which something could flow or slide. And by the turn of the twentieth century, the spiral cuts in a phonograph cylinder or record were being called grooves, a development that probably influenced the jazz senses of the word.
Groove acquired the figurative sense of a routine action, a way of life, a “rut” by the mid nineteenth century. We see this figurative use in Alfred Tennyson’s 1842 poem Locksley Hall in a passage extolling the virtues of progress in the Victorian Age:
I that rather held it better men should perish one by one,
Than that earth should stand at gaze like Joshua's moon in Ajalon!
Not in vain the distance beacons. Forward, forward let us range.
Let the peoples spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change.
This sense of a figurative groove by which something can travel appears in the world of sports writing by the 1920s. Here is an example of a baseball pitch being in the groove from the 9 March 1927 issue of the Sioux Falls, South Dakota Daily Argus-Leader:
When Babe Ruth comes to bat at a critical time in a tight baseball game what does the opposing pitcher do? Does he send one right “in the groove” where the famous slugger can put in his healthiest wallop? Assuredly not. He either walks Ruth, or tries to put one across where it is hardest for the home run king to swing.
Or this one from the world of golf in the 25 August 1927 issue of the Atlanta Journal by golf writer O. B. Keeler:
Big Bob Jones said later that in his opinion that putt was the best shot he ever had seen Bobby play. Certainly he has played few, if any, of greater importance. He had even more of a sidehill track than his opponent. He borrowed approximately three feet from the slope, and the ball, struck with exemplary firmness and crispness, took the curve as if in a groove and went into the middle of the cup as if drawn by a magnet.
The phrase in the groove moved from sports to other human endeavors, as is witnessed by this 5 March 1928 advertisement in Ohio’s Columbus Dispatch for a bank:
In a Groove
When a golfer; a tennis player, a trapshooter, or any other sportsman gets into his stride—in a streak of winning—he says he is “in a groove.” He just feels as if he cannot fail. Peculiar, isn’t it?
And then he gets into a groove of losing. He just feels he cannot win. Peculiar, isn’t it?
Some people are like that in money matters. Some are in a groove of spending—and some are in a groove of saving. Many are in a groove of depositing with us at 6%. There’s nothing peculiar about that.
The Brunson Bank & Trust Co.
And Keeler returns on 24 June 1932 with this use of the verb to groove:
Gene put in a good many hours, split up into thirty-minute periods, swinging that double-weight driver.
“You can’t hit with it,” he said. “You have to swing it, I think it tends to groove my swing, and to give me control of the wallop, when I’m using my regular club. Of course I may be wrong.
In a groove is attested to in a musical context in October 1932 by this quotation in the Oxford English Dictionary from the magazine Melody Maker:
Having such a wonderful time which puts me in a groove.
Four years later, in the 28 November 1936 issue of Melody Maker, this advertisement for Buescher trumpets and cornets ran:
EVERY TONE RIGHT “IN THE GROOVE”
Buescher “centered intonation” means exactly what it says. There is no cutting the corners—every tone is right “down the middle,” responds perfectly and accurately without favoring or forcing.
And the verb to groove, in a musical context, appeared in the November 1935 issue of Vanity Fair. This snippet is from a “sample” of jazz jargon, created by the article’s authors to show off various slang terms:
That’s the third date we’ve grooved half a dozen schmaltzy tunes for that wand-waver with never a swing item on the list.
And groovey is recorded in the journal American Speech in February 1937:
GROOVEY. Name applied to state of mind which is conducive to good playing.
The musical in the groove hit the big time in a profile of bandleader Benny Goodman in the 17 April 1937 issue of the New Yorker:
With the resurrection of true jazz, a new, richly expressive jargon has been developed which helps to explain just what swing is. The musical phrases which constitute a swing style are called licks, riffs, or get-offs. They are what a sender (hot star) or rideman (super-sender, creator of a style) gives when, feeling his stuff, he is in the groove and goes to town, or out of the world, or gets off on it.
And in October of the year, an article in American Speech defined the term as it was used in the New Yorker piece:
IN THE GROOVE. Play which is finished and of such quality as to be suitable for recording. A hot man is said to be in the groove if he is playing in his best style and ability. A band is in the groove if it is playing smoothly and in a well practiced fashion. This phrase applies to play anywhere, not only in the studio.
From there, in the groove and groovy persisted in musician slang until it blossomed in the counterculture of the 1960s. That’s how a fifteenth century borrowing from Dutch made its way to Woodstock.
Sources:
“The Battle Is On.” Daily Argus-Leader (Sioux Falls, South Dakota), 9 March 1927, 6/2. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
“Buescher True Tone Trumpets & Cornets” (advertisement). Melody Maker, 28 November 1936, 12/1. Worldradiohistory.com.
Green’s Dictionary of Slang, n.d., groove, n.2, groove, v., groovy, adj.2.
Keeler, O. B. “This Game of Golf.” Daily Clarion-Ledger (Jackson, Mississippi), 24 June 1932, 15/4. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
———. “Sudden Death Events Over with Von Elm a Casualty.” Atlanta Journal (Georgia), 25 August 1927, 12/1–2, Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
“In a Groove” (advertisement). Columbus Dispatch (Ohio), 5 March 1928, 10/7. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
Nichols, E. J. and W. L. Werner. “Hot Jazz Jargon.” Vanity Fair, 45.3, November 1935, 38. Vanity Fair Archive.
Nye, Russel B. “A Muscian’s Word List.” American Speech, 12.1, February 1937, 45–48 at 46/2. JSTOR.
Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. groove, n., groove, v., groovy, adj.
Steig, Henry Anton. “Profiles: Alligators’ Idol.” New Yorker, 17 April 1937. 31–38 at 31/3. New Yorker Archive.
Tennyson, Alfred. “Locksley Hall.” In Poems, vol. 2 of 2. Boston: William D. Ticknor, 1842, 2:110. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Webb, H. Brook. “The Slang of Jazz.” American Speech, 12.3, October 1937, 179–184 at 184/1. JSTOR.
Photo credit: Gina B., 2013. Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.