The term groom, which means “husband-to-be”, originated as a shortened form of bridegroom in the early seventeenth century. It is derived from the Old English word byrdguma, with the addition of the letter r influenced by another word also spelled as groom that referred to an “attendant” (a term still used for those who take care of horses, originating from a different Old English word meaning “grow”). The root of byrdguma is byrd, which was the precursor of “bride” and stems from a Proto-Germanic term for “daughter-in-law”, combined with guma, the Old English word for “man”. Therefore, a bridegroom can be simply understood as a “bride man”, while a groom is essentially just a man. The term guma can be traced back to Proto-Germanic gumo, ultimately originating from a Proto-Indo-European word meaning “earth”.
