Many references these days to the decade of the 1970s work in the word “groovy” somehow, like the website of That '70s Show (see bottom), or the Super Groovy '70s tribute to the decade’s music.
Yet for those of us actually old enough to remember the '70s, “groovy” is an anachronism. The word had a fairly short life: it became popular around 1966 (think Paul Simon’s Feelin’ Groovy), and then pretty much dropped out of sight after 1971. After that, if we used the word at all, it was in an ironic sense; it certainly wasn’t the word we would say typified the decade. I remember when someone wore a fringed vest to high school around 1975, someone else said with sarcasm, “My, don’t you look groovy.”
Anyone else of a certain age have memories of “groovy” as slang? Was it more a '60s word or a '70s word?
I remember it as more of a sixties type word. It came to be (in my little world at any rate) right about the time the beat-nik slang of the fifties was going away.
In my part of the US in the seventies, “groovy” would have been considered a rather quaint reminder of the sixties. To have used “groovy” in the seventies would have been like using the fifties term “neat-o” in the sixties.
I said it all the time in the early-1990s. I got the strangest looks. (But then, that was the point.) It seems that the word has made a small comeback since then.
I remember a song called “Feelin Groovy” but I don’t remember when it was popular or even if it was. I don’t remember ever hearing a living person utter the word “groovy” at any time.
The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin’ Groovy), written by Paul Simon and recorded by Harpers Bizarre, entered the Billboard Top 40 on 18 March 1967, and stayed there seven weeks, topping at #13.
Nothing about the '70s was groovy where I grew up. It was still the '50s written with different numbers. In fact, it was like that well into the '90s. Anyhow, I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone use that word without it being severely in jest.
I think the reason why you’re hearing it on TV is because shows about that era are being written by people who weren’t born yet during it. They’re not remembering what it was like. They’re imagining what it must have been like, and they’re almost always wrong.
I was in third grade in 1970 and graduated high school in 1979. I do not in all that time remember anyone saying “groovy.” That’s a totally 60s hippie term. As I recall, the slang used then was pretty much identical to the slang used now.
In the '70’s “groovy” was something your parents would say to show that they were down with “the kids”.
I was between the ages of 5 to 15 in the '70’s. The word I would be most likely to use to describe that decade would be “suck”… or some variation thereof.
Entered school in 1970, and we also used “groovy” only ironically. Not that we were THAT cynical and ironic to begin with; it was a nice time to grow up, even while the Bronx was burning. We played outside in the woods all the time alone, rode the subways, etc. Of course, you were wearing polyester in colors that matched your lollipops, had either a Dorothy Hamill or feathered haircut, and were seeing things in that woods or subway that grown Teamsters would faint dead away at, but hey. Childhood is magic.
Now, let me tell you about the time everybody’s Mom told us young brunettes to put up our hair so Son of Sam wouldn’t get us–he liked it long, you see. It was '77 and the Yankees were winning–HEY!! Kids! KIDS ON MY LAWN!!!
I was 8-18 in the seventies. I lived in D.C. Vermont and Santa Cruz, California. I never heard “groovy” except as a joke. I think it came and went in the sixties. I do remember a couple of hippie girls who said “Oh, wow” a lot.
The seventies were fun for me, at least when I got old enough to have fun.