girl

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English[edit]

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Alternative forms[edit]

Etymology[edit]

A group of girls in Sri Lanka.

From Middle English gerle, girle, gyrle (“young person of either sex”), of uncertain origin. Probably from Old English *gyrle, *gyrele, a diminutive form of Proto-Germanic *gurwijaz (compare North Frisian gör (“girl”), Low German Gör, Göre (“child of either sex”), German Göre (“young child”), dialectal Norwegian gorre, dialectal Swedish garre, gurre (“small child”)), from Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰer- (“short”)[1] (compare Old Irish gair (“short”), Ancient Greek χρεώ (khreṓ, “need, necessity”), χρήσθαι (khrḗsthai, “to need”), Sanskrit ह्रस्व (hrasva, “short, small”)).

Pronunciation[edit]

Noun[edit]

girl (plural girls)

  1. A female child, adolescent, or young woman.
    • 1898, Winston Churchill, chapter 4, in The Celebrity:
      No matter how early I came down, I would find him on the veranda, smoking cigarettes, or […] . And at last I began to realize in my harassed soul that all elusion was futile, and to take such holidays as I could get, when he was off with a girl, in a spirit of thankfulness.
    • 1934, Agatha Christie, chapter 3, in Murder on the Orient Express, London: HarperCollins, published 2017, page 27:
      The woman opposite him was a mere girl - twenty at a guess.
    • 2006, Scott Pilgrim & the Infinite Sadness, volume 3 of Scott Pilgrim
      Scott: Hey, it's our 8-month anniversary.
      Envy: Really? I can't even believe you remember that stuff!
      Scott: Whoa, wait a second... Am I the girl in this relationship?
      Envy: You totally are!
    • 2006, Scott Pilgrim & the Infinite Sadness, volume 3 of Scott Pilgrim
      Todd: Envy.. You're my girl.
      Envy: Oh, Todd... Let's both be girls!! [Envy kicks Todd on the crotch]
    • 2013 July 19, Mark Tran, “Denied an education by war”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 189, number 6, page 1:
      One particularly damaging, but often ignored, effect of conflict on education is the proliferation of attacks on schools […] as children, teachers or school buildings become the targets of attacks. Parents fear sending their children to school. Girls are particularly vulnerable to sexual violence.
    Amanda is a girl of 16.
  2. (by extension) a young female animal.
  3. Any woman, regardless of her age. (see usage notes)
  4. A female servant; a maid. (see usage notes)
  5. (uncommon, card games) A queen (the playing card.)
  6. (colloquial) A term of endearment. (see usage notes)
  7. One's girlfriend.
    • Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Girl from Hollywood
      There isn't any guy going to steal my girl!
    • 1996, Elizabeth Wong, Kimchee and Chitlins: A Serious Comedy about Getting Along, page 74:
      I took my girl to the cinema to watch your American movies.
  8. One's daughter.
    Your girl turned up on our doorstep.
  9. (Britain, dialect, obsolete) A roebuck two years old.
  10. (US, slang) Cocaine, especially in powder form.
    • 1969, Iceberg Slim, Pimp: The Story of My Life, Cash Money Content (2011), →ISBN, page 43:
      She had taught me to snort girl, and almost always when I came to her pad, there would be thin sparkling rows of crystal cocaine on the glass top of the cocktail table.
    • 1977, Odie Hawkins, Chicago Hustle, Holloway House (1987), →ISBN, page 175:
      Elijah nodded congenially to the early evening regulars in the Afro Lounge, headed straight for the telephone hung midway between the mens and womens, his nose smarting from a couple thick lines of recently snorted girl.
    • 2005, K'wan, Hoodlum, St. Martin's Press (2005), →ISBN, page 185:
      After about an hour or two of half-ass sex and snorting girl, Honey was zoned out. […] She flexed her still numb fingers, trying to find a warmth that didn't seem to come. Cocaine always made her numb.
    • For more examples of usage of this term, see Citations:girl.

Usage notes[edit]

  • (any woman, regardless of her age): Calling a grown woman a "girl" may be considered either a compliment or an insult, depending on context and sensibilities. In some cases, the term is used as a euphemism for virgin, to distinguish a female who has never engaged in sexual intercourse (a "girl") from one who has done so (and is a woman).

Synonyms[edit]

Derived terms[edit]

Derived terms

Pages starting with "girl".

Translations[edit]

The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables, removing any numbers. Numbers do not necessarily match those in definitions. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout#Translations.
Translations to be checked

References[edit]

  1. ^ Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Language, s.v. "girl" (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2002).

Verb[edit]

girl (third-person singular simple present girls, present participle girling, simple past and past participle girled)

  1. (transitive) To feminize or girlify.
    • 2005, Leerom Medovoi, Rebels: Youth and the Cold War Origins of Identity (page 293)
      Quite different is the way in which the tomboy girled the rebel narrative. In recent years, queer theorists have taken a deep interest in the tomboy as a prefigure for the butch dyke.
    • 2011, Stephanie Harzewski, Chick Lit and Postfeminism
      One can argue that the genre “yuppified” the popular romance novel or perhaps “girled” the not especially gender-specific concept of the young urban professional.

See also[edit]

Anagrams[edit]

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