Origin of Surf Lingo “Groms”

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Dee from Oceanside.

Hello, Dee. What’s going on?

Not much.

You got a question for us today?

I do have a question, and my question is about the origin of the word grom.

I’m a surfer, and we use that word to refer to little surfers or little beachy kids.

Little what kids?

Kids that live near the beach or look beachy.

Beachy. You said beachy kids. Gotcha.

Now, you’re a surfer yourself.

-huh.

And so how would you use that in a sentence?

You would call to them, hey, Grom, come here.

You would, if you referred to them, you would just refer to them as Grom.

Hey, look at that Grom.

Check out that Grom.

Is it derogatory?

You know, I’m an old surfer, so I remember when it used to be derogatory about 10, 15 years ago.

I think it’s kind of just a general term for young surfers now.

As I understand it, it comes from an old French term that meant servant or valet,

And then it moved into English as a term for a cabin boy on a ship.

And Grant, my sense is that it probably went from there and migrated to Australia,

Which is a wonderful font of surfing slang, right?

Right. It is Australian originally, and it came out of the Australian surfing scene

And the great beaches that they have there and the great breaks that they’ve got.

And actually, it’s not that long that it’s been in American English, probably 20 or 30 years at most.

And it applies not only to surfing, but now it’s sort of moved into the skateboard world and the snowboarding.

Right, snowboarding too.

A lot of the terms from surfing actually show up in snowboarding and skating.

Well, Dee, we have to go get some grunts now.

Do you use that?

What’s a sandwich?

No.

Food?

Yeah, food after a big…

What do you call it, Dee, when you have been surfing all morning and then you go get some food?

Do you have a slang term for that?

I think we’re a little bit behind the Australians with our lingo.

We just call it breakfast.

I see.

Well, I think you should start calling your breakfast grunts.

Okay.

All right.

Well, thank you very much.

Yeah, cowabunga.

Surf’s up.

All right.

Shaka bra.

Surf’s up.

Ciao.

We’re out of here.

Bye-bye.

Thank you so much, Dee.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

You know, I see surfers all the time because I live near a surfing area,

And I go for walks by the beach, and it’s funny because I never hear them saying anything.

They’re just kind of carrying their boards and have this blissed-out look,

So I don’t know where all this lingo starts up unless it’s when they’re out there paddling about

And waiting for the next wave.

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