groovy

View more Literature & Language videos

adjective

Particularly excellent: divine, fabulous, fantastic, fantastical, glorious, marvelous, sensational, splendid, superb, terrific, wonderful. Informal dandy, dreamy, great, ripping, super, swell, tremendous. Slang cool, hot, keen¹, neat, nifty. Idioms: out of this world. See good/bad.

Origin: 1937

The first to be in the groove were African-American jazz musicians, early in the 1930s. They are no longer around to tell us where this groove came from, but scholars have speculated. Maybe it began with that relatively new invention, the phonograph, whose sound came out right when the needle was in the groove; maybe the musicians--virtually all of them men--were creating yet another metaphor for sex. No matter. What matters is the Cool (1949) sound when a player is really in the groove, not forcing the music but letting it flow. "The jazz musicians gave no grandstand performances," wrote an admiring reviewer in 1933, "they simply got a great burn from playing in the groove."

It could be summed up with the word groovy, defined in 1937 as a "state of mind which is conducive to good playing." Before long, there were groovy audiences as well as groovy performers, and by the 1940s things in general could be groovy. Love was groovy, skating was groovy, even pitching a no-hit baseball game was groovy. (By the way, since the early 1900s, the center of the strike zone in baseball has been known as the groove, and a pitcher who throws a fastball there is said to be grooving.)

Groovy was in the air everywhere in the hip, laid-back counterculture of the 1960s, when feeling groovy was the ultimate ambition and praise, as well as the title of a hit song. To groove was "to have fun." "Life as it is really grooves," declares a fictional letter from a group of groovy young dropouts in a 1969 short story by John Updike. Later generations have not always felt so groovy, but they know how to use the word when they want to speak so their elders can understand.

---

adjective
adjective

1: Playing, or capable of playing, jazz or similar music with fluent inspiration. (1937 —) .
Mezzrow & Wolfe When he was groovy...he'd begin to play the blues on a beat-up guitar (1946).

2: Fashionable and exciting; enjoyable, excellent. (1944 —) .
Listener There are a lot of guys going round with groovy hair-styles (1968).

[From groove noun + -y.]

Previous:	groove, grommet, grok
Next:	grope, gross, gross-out

See words rhyming with "groovy."

Dansk (Danish)
adj. - med på det sidste nye, vanebunden, "høj", helt i orden

Nederlands (Dutch)
helemaal te gek, met groeven

Français (French)
adj. - sensass, super bien (arch), dans le vent (arch)

Deutsch (German)
adj. - (ugs.) klasse, rillenartig

Ελληνική (Greek)
adj. - της μόδας, μοντέρνος, τσίφτικος

Italiano (Italian)
alla moda, eccellente

Português (Portuguese)
adj. - bastante agradável (gír.)

Русский (Russian)
рутинный, обычный, превосходный

Español (Spanish)
adj. - atractivo, agradable, estupendo, excelente

Svenska (Swedish)
adj. - slentrianmässig, toppen, häftigt

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
绝妙的, 墨守成规的, 时髦的

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
adj. - 絕妙的, 墨守成規的, 時髦的

한국어 (Korean)
adj. - 매혹적인, 편협한, 모두 같은, 우수한

日本語 (Japanese)
adj. - 溝の

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(صفه) مثلم‏

עברית (Hebrew)
adj. - ‮אופנתי, מהנה, מרגש, מצוין, של חריץ‬

If you are unable to view some languages clearly, click here.