girl
//ˈɡɜːl//
Forms
- Plural
- girls
- present (v1)
- girl
- past (v2)
- girled
- past participle (v3)
- girled
- present participle
- girling
- 3rd person singular
- girls
Definitions
1.A female child.
- I saw a little girl feeding, brushing, and talking to a heifer.
2.A woman, especially a young and often attractive woman.(offensive)
- He has a crush on a girl at work. We were kidding with him yesterday about his work crush.
3.A term of address to a female (see usage notes)(colloquial)
- Hey, girl, I haven't seen you since last week! Where you been?
- "What a pity you couldn't see it." "Isn't it?" I agreed. "Now do go away, there's a good girl."
4.One's girlfriend.(colloquial)
- There isn't any guy going to steal my girl!
- I took my girl to the cinema to watch your American movies.
- He lucked out with that girl of his. Smart, sweet, sassy, and pretty too.
1.To feminize or girlify; to gender as a girl or as for girls.
- 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.
- 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.
2.To staff with or as a girl or girls.(informal)
- She and her Altrurian diplomat husband, arriving there by sea, are greeted by flower-laden boats, each not manned, but girled by six rowers, who pulled as true a stroke as I ever saw.
- To her disappointment, the chatty Carlene DuBois wasn't behind the desk; instead it was manned, or girled, by a frothy little blonde who barely looked old enough to be out of high school.
Frequency
Overall
Very common· #313
By learning goal
- Everyday conversation
- Very common
- General reading & writing
- Common
- Academic
- Uncommon
- Literature
- Common
Related words
Etymology
From Middle English gerle, girle, gyrle (“young person (boy or girl)”), perhaps from Old English *gyrele, from Proto-West Germanic *gurilā, from a zero-grade diminutive of *gaurā (“young child”) + *-ilā. Ultimately of unknown origin. Doublet of gal/gyal and gyaru.
Cognates