I heard a song tonight called Man, That’s Groovy. I don’t remember the artist, but the DJ said it was a 1941 recording. I’ve always associated ‘groovy’ with the '60s – and there it is, a couple of decades earlier.
When did the slang term ‘groovy’ enter the language?
Here’s a Jimmy Dorsey YouTube from 1943.
Wikipedia corroborates what I thought I knew on the subject:
Groovy originated in the jazz culture of the 1930s, in which it referred to the groove of a piece of music
Groovy.
Thanks.
That’s even groovier. I had no idea it was that old.
BTW, Mary Healy, the woman in the video, is apparently still alive at the age of 91.
Here’s the OED’s list of sample quotations:
No link, because you need a subscription to view the full OED.
So I’m thinking that possibly the origin of the association of the word “groove” with music came about because of the grooves in those funny black round things we used to spin around with a needle on them and music came out.
IIRC they called them “records.”
It actually goes back to the middle ages.
This was a question on QI a few weeks ago.
Ah, the one useful contribution I could make, cruelly snatched away from me! shakes fist in impotent fury
Chill out, man, no need to have a cow. GuanoLad’s groovy, can you dig it ? And you’re groovy too. And that’s far out, man !
We’ve lost both “skate wacky” & “skate bug” to the shifting sands of modern slang? So sad.
“Cool” came back. And I’ll never give up “far out!” What about “Dig it?”
Please, no “peachy keen” though.
Have we already lost “sk8ter boi”, too?
One can only hope.