Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use grovel in a sentence

15 example sentences · verb

Grovel means to be prone on the ground. Example: “She refused to grovel in front of the bully, standing her ground.”

Examples of grovel by meaning

verbTo abase oneself before another person.

  • She refused to grovel in front of the bully, standing her ground.

verbTo be slavishly nice to someone or apologize in the hope of securing something.

  • He had to grovel before his boss after missing the important meeting.
  • He hated to grovel, but he knew it was the only way to save his job.

More sentences with grovel

  • She's always either chiseling or groveling, it seems.From the entry chisel
  • Just like Hollywood continues to grovel for its share of the expanding Chinese box office.2014 December 29, Sarah, “Call of Duty: Captain America”, in Lainey Gossip, archived from the original on 18 Mar 2026. From the entry Japandering
  • Without Cerberus, humanity was doomed to an existence of groveling subservience at the feet of alien masters.2008, Drew Karpyshyn, Mass Effect: Ascension, Del Rey Books, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 3. From the entry vindicate
  • I'd probably grovel at his footpaws like an zealous servant.1997 March 14, Growltiger, “Furry sexuality”, in alt.lifestyle.furry (Usenet). From the entry footpaw
  • The editor paid a heavy price - he was subsequently compelled to offer a grovelling and humiliating personal apology, following a tsunami of protest.2020 August 26, Nigel Harris, “Comment Special: Catastrophe at Carmont”, in Rail, page 4. From the entry tsunami
  • I don't know about you, but I don't want to grovel through a bunch of code blocks to track down a typo or thinko.2008, Kurt Wall, Tcl and Tk Programming for the Absolute Beginner, page 134. From the entry thinko
  • I had toadied to her when she was the awesome duenna of my darling, and a groveling something still persisted in my attitude toward her.1955, Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: G[eorge] P[almer] Putnam’s Sons, published August 1958, →OCLC, part…. From the entry duenna
  • The idol has come sliding down its pedestal to fawn and grovel with all the other infatuates in the dust about my feet.”1911 October 26, Max Beerbohm, Zuleika Dobson, or, An Oxford Love Story, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: John Lane Company…. From the entry afire
  • The idol has come sliding down its pedestal to fawn and grovel with all the other infatuates in the dust about my feet.1911, Max Beerbohm, chapter 4, in Zuleika Dobson, New York: John Lane, page 59. From the entry infatuate
  • He heard the hateful clank of their chains; he felt them cringe and grovel, and there rose within him a protest and a prophecy.1903 April 18, W[illiam] E[dward] Burghardt Du Bois, “Of Alexander Crummell”, in The Souls of Black Folk: Essays and Sketches, Chicago…. From the entry cringe
  • This was partly because “street” parody tastes best with tough, confident characters, but this guy is always complaining, groveling to the Phantoms, or gloating like a six year old.2012 September 23, Hellactic Translator Caphi, “Things of the Fortnight”, in https://shininggalaxy.wordpress.com/, people. From the entry ebonify
  • LINES OF teary-eyed Florida motorists stretching to four blocks long clog the streets as they grovel for their bi-weekly allotment of a coffee potful of gas.1974 February 22, Mike Shropshire, “Rangers Seeking Fuel for Friday’s Training Camp Opener”, in Fort Worth Star-Telegram, ninety-fourth…. From the entry coffee potful

Meaning of grovel

  1. verb To be prone on the ground.
  2. verb To crawl.
  3. verb To abase oneself before another person.

Full definition of grovel

Questions about grovel in a sentence

How do you use grovel in a sentence?
Grovel is used as a verb. For example: “She refused to grovel in front of the bully, standing her ground.”
What is a short sentence with grovel?
“She's always either chiseling or groveling, it seems.”
What does grovel mean?
Grovel means to be prone on the ground.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: grovel (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use grovel in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/grovel. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.