Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (also grouper) a girl or young woman who associates herself with rock bands, offering her body in return for a share of their celebrity.

1966		Frank Zappa ‘Motherly Love’ 🎵 Send us up some little groupies / And we’ll take their hands / And rock ’em till they sweat and cry.
1968		T. Wolfe Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1969) 8: She used to be a teenie grouper hanging out with a rock ’n’ roll group called The Wild Flowers.
1974		J. Lahr Hot to Trot 18: The Woman’s a thirty-three-year-old married groupie!
1987		G. Tate ‘Michael Jackson’ in Flyboy in the Buttermilk (1992) 98: Spitefully named ‘Dirty Diana,’ a groupie fantasy.
1998		C. Fleming High Concept 113: Two or three of his ‘girls’, usually music industry groupies.
2003		G. Tate Midnight Lightning 54: The typical carnivorous lust of the average touring rock star for hotyoungpinkgroupieflesh [sic].
2010		K. Richards Life 326: Roadies and technicians [...] hangers-on and groupies.
2010		K. Richards Life 350: There were loads of groupies out there that were just good old girls who liked to take care of guys.
2019		C.D. Rosales Word Is Bone [ebook] A groupie manifested out of thin air.
2024		J. Meades Empty Wigs (t/s) 333: Every hanger-on had his hangers-on. Who was picking up a dozen groupies’ fares?

2. anyone, male or female, who is an obsessive fan; the adoration need not run to sex, nor are the subjects necessarily rock stars.

1972		L. Sherr ‘Here Come the Political Groupies’ Sat. Rev. (US) 10 June 22: Steve Doyle [...] is a groupie. No, not the kind of groupie that chases after rock singers. Steve’s serious. He works for his idol, and his idol happens to be a presidential primary contender.
1975		J. Wambaugh Choirboys (1976) 298: You’re just a camp follower! A station house groupie! A cop sucker!
1986		C. Bowles G’DAY 1: Darlene is the daughter of Mr and Mrs Foster. [...] Her room is always a bit of a brothel. She wants to be a surfie groupie.
1991		B. Hamper Rivethead (1992) 211: ‘She’s always been a fan of your writing.’ ‘I don’t need groupies. I need a damn exorcist!’.
1998		R.G. Barrett Mud Crab Boogie (2013) [ebook] ‘Keep that groupie girlfriend of yours away from the Mud Crabs when I bring them to town’.
1999		Guardian Guide 22–28 May 57: A groupie claiming to have slept with 30 footballers.
2009		Observer Mag. 1 Feb. 11/4: How to be ... A Darwin Groupie.
2012		T. Piccirilli Last Kind Words 161: [of a serial killer’s wife] ‘They [i.e. interviews] make me appear to be an unbalanced … groupie’.
2017		R. Friedman Street Warrior 230: She [...] wasn’t what you might call a ‘cop groupie’ [. . .][T]here are quite a number of women who gravitate toward the badg.
2024		J. Meades Empty Wigs (t/s) 528: Know what I call Popes? Gwoupies. Suckers-Up. Bwown-Noses. Lickspittles.