Word.ws English Dictionary

groveling

groveling adjective: showing excessive, servile respect or submission, often to gain favor or forgiveness. Also the present participle and gerund of grovel.

Adjective

groveling (comparative more groveling, superlative most groveling)

  1. Showing excessive, servile respect or submission, often to gain favor or forgiveness.
  2. Of an animal, having the belly or face towards or on the ground.

Noun

groveling (plural grovelings)

  1. The act or practice of one who grovels.

Also used as

groveling is also the present participle and gerund of grovel.

Forms of groveling

Adjective
comparativemore groveling
superlativemost groveling
alternative UKgrovelling
Noun
pluralgrovelings

Questions about groveling

What does groveling mean?
Groveling means showing excessive, servile respect or submission, often to gain favor or forgiveness.
What part of speech is groveling?
Groveling can be an adjective or a noun.

Words near groveling in the dictionary

  1. Groveland
  2. groveled
  3. groveler
  4. grovelers
  5. groveless
  6. groveling
  7. grovelingly
  8. grovelings
  9. grovelled
  10. groveller
  11. grovellers

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: groveling (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “groveling.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/groveling. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.