groundling
pronunciation
How to pronounce groundling in British English:
UK ['graʊndlɪŋ]
How to pronounce groundling in American English:
US ['graʊndlɪŋ]
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- Noun:
- in Elizabethan theater: a playgoer in the cheap standing section
Word Origin
- groundling (n.)
- "theater patron in the pit" (which originally had no floor or benches), c. 1600, from ground (n.) in an Elizabethan sense of "pit of a theater" + -ling. From the beginning emblematic of bad or unsophisticated taste. Old English grundling was a type of fish.