puelline

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English[edit]

Etymology[edit]

From Latin puella (“female child, girl”) + English -ine (suffix meaning ‘of or pertaining to’ forming adjectives). Puella is derived from puellus (“male child, young boy”) + -a (feminine form of -us); puellus is a contraction of puerulus (“little boy; little slave”), from puer (“boy, lad; male page, servant, or slave; child”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *peh₂w- (“few, little; smallness”)) + -ulus (“suffix forming diminutives of nouns indicating small size or youth”).

Pronunciation[edit]

Adjective[edit]

puelline (comparative more puelline, superlative most puelline)

  1. Synonym of puellile (“characteristic of, or pertaining to, a girl or girls”)
    Synonyms: girlish, girllike, girly
    Antonyms: ungirlish, ungirly
    • 1871 July, “Americanisms: A Study of Words and Manners”, in Albert Taylor Bledsoe, editor, The Southern Review, volume IX, number 19, St. Louis: Southwestern Book and Publishing Company, […]. London: Trübner & Co., […], page 533:
      The ‘young England’ poets, Dobell, Bulwer, Swinburne, Morris and Rosatti, seem to have effected an arrangement by which whatever any one of them writes the others shall criticise; and the quantity of hysterical admiration and puelline raising of hands and eyes and waving of applausive cambric that has already resulted from this camaraderie is really surprising, not to say alarming.
    • 1894 September 1, John M. Robertson, “The Saxon and the Celt”, in The Free Review: A Monthly Magazine, volume II, number 6, London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co., page 482:
      But a close study soon reveals in Dr. [Goldwin] Smith’s criticism the very defect of balance which he imputes more or less all round. His relation to the things he antagonises is at best a checking of the puerile by the puelline. As we go through his essays one by one, and note the method and the conclusions, it comes home to us that instead of a scientific tester of theories and theses we are listening to a gentleman in a state of covert irritation against things in general, with whom an instinct of opposition does duty for a body of principles.
    • 1906, Truth, page 1447, column 1:
      Mr. Dickinson’s novel would have been stronger if he had kept in mind Talleyrand’s maxim, “Les superlatifs sont les cachets des sots;” since his hero’s extravagant swearing is puerile or even puelline—puelline at least in strength of language being a girl’s index of strength of character.
    • 1947, L. R. Broster, “Adrenal Glands”, in Ernest Rock Carling, J. Paterson Ross, editors, British Surgical Practice, volume 1, London: Butterworth & Co.; St. Louis, Mo.: The C. V. Mosby Company, section “The Adreno-genital Syndrome”, subsection “Group I. Pre-puberal virilism”, page 98:
      On the female side the menses do not start, the breasts fail to grow, the external genitalia remain puelline, the uterus and cervix are infantile and the ovarian follicles do not ripen.
    • c. 1981, Appleton H. Schneider, (A Court Procedure Much Like Horse Manure) The Case of a Little Mustang in a Great Big Field, Lulu.com, published 2011, →ISBN:
      Although my 5’10”/124# appearance could match the puelline configuration of the plaintiff in the eyes of the law . . . as ectomorphic, the sensual beauty of female youth might just sway the jurors’ sympathies more than the somewhat weathered skinniness of the middling-aged male!!!
    • 1990, “Clinical Notes by a Resident Patient”, in Steven Rothman, editor, The Standard Doyle Company: Christopher Morley on Sherlock Holmes, New York: Fordham University Press, published 2000, →ISBN, page 350:
      My only comment (which Jane Nightwork is too puelline to comprehend) is don’t do your schism with nail scissors.

Translations[edit]

synonym of puellile — see puellile

Further reading[edit]

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