GROOM  , in

modern usage a male servant attached to the stables, whose duties are to attend to the cleaning, feeding, currying and care generally of horses . The earliest meaning of the word appears to be that of a boy, and in 16th and 17th century literature it frequently occurs, in pastorals, for a shepherd lover . Later it is used for any male attendant, and thus survives in the name for several officials in the royal household, such as the grooms-in-waiting, and the grooms of the great chamber . The groom-porter, whose office was abolished by George III., saw to the preparation of the sovereign's apartment, and, during the 16th and 17th centuries, provided cards and dice for playing, and was the authority to whom were submitted all questions of gaming within the court . The origin of the word is obscure . The O . Fr. gromet, shop boy, is taken by French etymologists to be derived from the English . From the application of this word to a wine-taster in a wine merchant's shop, is derived gourmet, an epicure . According to the New English Dictionary, though there are no instances of groom in other Teutonic languages, the word may be ultimately connected with the root of " to grow." In " bridegroom," a newly married man, life; he lived to preside over the birth and first days of his other creation, the society of Brothers of Common Life . He died of the plague at Deventer in 1384, at the age of 44 . The chief authority for Groot's life is Thomas a Kempis, Vita Gerardi Magni (translated into English by J . P .

Arthur, The Founders of the New Devotion, 19o5); also the Chronicon Windeshemense of Johann Busch (ed . K . Grube, 1886) . An account, based on these sources, will be found in S . Kettlewell, Thomas a Kempis and the Brothers of Common Life (1882), i. c . 5; and a shorter account in F . R . Cruise, Thomas a Kempis, 1887, pt. ii . An excellent sketch, with an account of Groot's writings, is given by L . Schulze in Herzog-Hauck, Realencyklopadie (ed . 3) ; he insists on the fact that Groot's theological and ecclesiastical ideas were those commonly current in his day. and that the attempts to make him " a reformer before the Reformation " are unhistorical . (E .

C . B.) GROOVE-TOOTHED

SQUIRREL, a large and brilliantly coloured Bornean squirrel, Rhithrosciurus macrotis, representing a genus by itself distinguished from all other members of the family Sciuridae by having numerous longitudinal grooves on the front surface of the incisor teeth; the molars being of a simpler type than in other members of the family . The tail is large and fox-like, and the ears are tufted and the flanks marked by black and white bands .