groundling Meaning, Definition & Usage

  1. noun in Elizabethan theater: a playgoer in the cheap standing section

WordNet

Ground"ling noun
Etymology
Ground + -ling.
Definitions
  1. (Zoöl.) A fish that keeps at the bottom of the water, as the loach.
  2. A spectator in the pit of a theater, which formerly was on the ground, and without floor or benches.
    No comic buffoon to make the groundlings laugh. Coleridge.

Webster 1913