grovel.
To be prone on the ground.
Meaning & usage
To be prone on the ground.
To crawl.
To abase oneself before another person.
She refused to grovel in front of the bully, standing her ground.
To be slavishly nice to someone or apologize in the hope of securing something.
He had to grovel before his boss after missing the important meeting.
He hated to grovel, but he knew it was the only way to save his job.
To take pleasure in mundane activities.
Where this word comes from
From Middle English *grovelen, from Old Norse grufla, grœfla (“to grovel”), from Proto-Germanic *grubilōną (“to dig, delve into”), from Proto-Indo-European *gʰrebʰ‑ (“to dig, scrape, scrabble, scratch”); akin to Old Norse á grufu (“on one's belly”) ( > Old Norse grúfa (“to lie face down, grovel”)). Cognate with Scots grovel, gruvil (“to grovel”), German grübeln (“to meditate, ponder”), Norwegian Nynorsk gruvla (“to grovel”). Compare also West Frisian groebeltsje (“to make a mess, skip school, skive”), Dutch grobbelen (“to grope, root, grub”).
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.