Father and son surf lesson in Morro Bay, CA 11 of 12

A grommet (grom, or gremmie) is a young participant in

extreme sports Action sports, adventure sports or extreme sports are activities perceived as involving a high degree of risk. These activities often involve speed, height, a high level of physical exertion and highly specialized gear. Extreme tourism overl ...

. Originally, a grommet was a surfer under the age of 16. In recent years, this has expanded to include other extreme sports, most notably skateboarding,

roller derby Roller derby is a roller skating contact sport played by two teams of fifteen members. Roller derby is played by approximately 1,250 amateur leagues worldwide, mostly in the United States. Game play consists of a series of short scrimmages (j ...

and snowboarding.

Etymology

The first contextual use of the word appears in a 1964 article by the journalist,

Nicholas Tomalin Nicholas Osborne Tomalin (30 October 1931 – 17 October 1973) was an English journalist and writer. Tomalin was the son of Miles Tomalin, a Communist poet and veteran of the Spanish Civil War. He studied English literature at Trinity Hall, Camb ...

, who on a visit to

Newquay Newquay ( ; kw, Tewynblustri) is a town on the north coast in Cornwall, in the south west of England. It is a civil parish, seaside resort, regional centre for aerospace industries, spaceport and a fishing port on the North Atlantic coast ...

in Cornwall noted that: "A surfer who is no good or just beginning is a 'gremmie'." The word "Gremmie", which was used in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., federal district, five ma ...

in the 1940s and 1950s, was derived from the word "

Gremlin A gremlin is a mischievous folkloric creature invented at the beginning of the 20th century to originally explain malfunctions in aircraft and later in other machinery and processes and their operators. Depictions of these creatures vary widely ...

". The term "grommet" was used in ''

Lockie Leonard, Legend Lockie Leonard is a fictional character and the protagonist of a trilogy of young adult novels by Australian by the author Tim Winton. Character Lockie Leonard is a 12-year-old who moves to Angelus, a fictional, small coastal town in the sou ...

'' by

Tim Winton Timothy John Winton (born 4 August 1960) is an Australian writer. He has written novels, children's books, non-fiction books, and short stories. In 1997, he was named a Living Treasure by the National Trust of Australia, and has won the Mile ...

in 1997: "Things are never as simple as they seem, not even for grommets". This earliest citation was a few years after the creation of the

Wallace and Gromit ''Wallace & Gromit'' is a British stop-motion comedy franchise created by Nick Park of Aardman Animations. The series consists of four short films and one feature-length film, and has spawned numerous spin-offs and TV adaptations. The series c ...

animated films. The word was originally a term for an inexperienced surfer, but has become an accepted term for all young participants. For example, the

British Surfing Association British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English ...

offers a Grommet Surf Club for young surfers.

Alternative etymology

The word could also have been derived from an Early Modern English word for "junior seaman".

Notes

Term first made popular on the South Coast of NSW in the 1970s Note that the two terms may have different origins contemporaneously, grommet or "gremmie" {{clarify, date=June 2019

References

Surfing