Word: groundling Part of Speech: noun Etymology: From ground + -ling. Compare Old English grundling (“a groundling fish, grundel”). 1. Any of various plants or animals living on or near the ground, as a benthic fish or bottom feeder, especially Example: In the pond behind the garden there were plenty of carp and groundlings. Example: […] the ewe called Tiny Crossed over and touched her, the others turned anxious looks From sniffing the autumn-pinched leaves of the groundling blackberries. 2. Any of various plants or animals living on or near the ground, as a benthic fish or bottom feeder, especially: Example: The BEARDED-LOACH or GROUNDLING. Gobites Barbatula. It is a small fish about five inches long, bearded with six small Threads, three on each side Example: When you angle for a trout, you are to do it as deep, that is, as near to the bottom as you can, provided your bait do not drag, although a trout will sometimes take it in that posture: if for a grayling, you are then to fish further from the buttom, it being a fish that usually swims nearer to the middle of the water, and lies always loose; or, however, is more apt to raise than trout, and more inclined to raise than to descend, even to a groundling. 3. Any of various plants or animals living on or near the ground, as a benthic fish or bottom feeder, especially: 4. Any of various plants or animals living on or near the ground, as a benthic fish or bottom feeder, especially: 5. Any of various plants or animals living on or near the ground, as a benthic fish or bottom feeder, especially: 6. An audience member in the cheap section (usually standing; originally in Elizabethan theater). Example: O, it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who for the most part are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb-shows and noise. Example: when your Groundling, and gallery-Commoner buyes his sport by the penny, and, like a Hagler, is glad to utter it againe by retailing. 7. A person of uncultivated or uncultured taste. Labels: broadly Example: This is what the magnanimous National Liberal Federation have said in effect to the House of Lords, and what, it should seem, they innocently regard as likely to impress the Gladstonian groundling. Example: If you happen to be a genius it will not necessarily be fatal to your inspiration if you succeed in winning the love of a groundling. Female groundlings often make excellent housekeepers; male groundlings good providers. But if your groundling is not of the pure type and should greatly admire your intellectual output, you will probably adapt your future production to the groundling understanding, and at that moment you begin to die at the top. 8. One who is confined to the ground, especially Example: It is not the good workman that is wont to quarrel with his tools ; adminicular aids and clinging propensities are fit only for the groundling, the child who is unable to walk upright and must be fain to crawl and to creep on as he best may. Example: On Tuesday, April 17th, 1906, a business man of San Francisco ascended for the first time in five years to one of the upper stores of the highest sky-scraper in the Newpaper Angle. He was a groundling who had kept his ears as well as his feet to the earth. 9. One who is confined to the ground, especially: Labels: slang Example: The poor plodding groundling, helpless and impotent, is swooped upon at will, day and night, completely wiped out at the whim of the low- flying plane, which soars off leaving complete and utter destruction behind it! Example: He then enlisted in the air force and served as a groundling in North Africa, Sicily, and England. 10. One who is confined to the ground, especially: Example: Simon noticed a groundling look intently at Walsingham's purse and nudge his mate. Example: One, a short groundling with dark leathery skin and long white hair, said, "It's not your house, Ventl. You, stranger, did you come here to trade?" 11. Adam, before eating the apple of knowledge of good and evil (emphasizing his creation from the ground). Example: It is not good for the groundling to be alone I will make for it a help as its counterpart (2.18). Example: The two of them were naked, the groundling and his woman, they were not ashamed.