Where did that horrible phrase ‘grooming for sex’ come from? We have had plenty of moral panics over people grooming children for sex over the internet, & are now in the midst of another one over the belief that no white girl is safe from marauding gangs who will groom them for sex on the street.
According to the OED the first use of to groom in a figurative sense - to prepare as a political candidate or to prepare or coach for a career, a sporting contest - began in America with the earliest quotation in print found in the Louisville, Kentucky Courier-Journal in 1887.
Curiously the OED gives a third meaning of the verb - To be made a bridegroom. This is labelled nonce-use, which seems to be a special OED term meaning used only once, in this case in Byron’s long poem, Don Juan.
But in current British criminals' slang nonce means A sexual deviant; a person convicted of a sexual offence, especially child abuse.
A curious chain of meanings
