Marriage is one of the most loved moments of one’s life (unless you repent it later on but yeah). Lately, Facebook has been full of these wedding pictures with people wishing the Bride and the Groom their best wishes for the future. Had they known the origin of these words, they probably would have reacted very differently.
There are various theories about the origin of the term “groom”. It has the same root as the verb “groom”. “Groom” means to take care of or to train something to be better. For example, a boss always grooms his successor. The two words come from an old English word called guma which refers to a young servant boy who takes care of horses.
So it basically means that grooms are male servants who are meant to take care of their wives.
This sounds sexist, right? Do they mean that every man becomes their wife’s servant after marriage? Strangely enough, there are some particularly weird theories about the origin of the word “Bride” as well.
The word “bride” is said to have been originated from the Old English word “bru” which means to cook. In what maybe one of the most sexist origin stories of all time, bride manages to overshadow the latent sexism in the origin of groom.
Does it mean that a bride is someone who is only meant for cooking?
If there are two opposite kinds of sexism at work here, does that cancel it out and mean that there is no sexism at all? Or does it make it more sexist? We’ll never know.