Talk:girl
Removed
Removed the following (does not fit here):
e.g.This toy is girlish
Etymology
Where did Middle English get the word from? Surely it wasn't coined based on the Proto-Germanic form. Mglovesfun (talk) 09:04, 19 May 2013 (UTC)
why not *gʰreh₁- to grow?
Deletion discussion
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Rfv-sense (US, slang) cocaine. No quotes provided and I have my doubts. Might just be lingo used among a small group of people. Jamesjiao → T ◊ C 22:15, 14 May 2013 (UTC)
- I have heard this before, but it is in reference to powder as opposed to hard cocaine which is referred to as "boy" Leasnam (talk) 22:58, 17 May 2013 (UTC)
- Cited. This seems to be African American Vernacular slang, based on the fact that the majority of cites I was able to find were from African-American literature. -Cloudcuckoolander (formerly Astral) (talk) 01:06, 19 May 2013 (UTC)
- That may be, but I wouldn't associate it strictly with African-American slang: it's just drug lingo. Leasnam (talk) 06:26, 19 May 2013 (UTC)
- Also doubles as a slang term for heroin according to Cassell's Dictionary of Slang. -Cloudcuckoolander (formerly Astral) (talk) 07:27, 19 May 2013 (UTC)
- That may be, but I wouldn't associate it strictly with African-American slang: it's just drug lingo. Leasnam (talk) 06:26, 19 May 2013 (UTC)
- Cited. This seems to be African American Vernacular slang, based on the fact that the majority of cites I was able to find were from African-American literature. -Cloudcuckoolander (formerly Astral) (talk) 01:06, 19 May 2013 (UTC)
Can be used for non-humans too
e.g. "we're getting a boy cat and a girl cat" (but not "woman cat"). Equinox ◑ 00:44, 16 November 2015 (UTC)
- I didn't see this until now, but I did add something about this recently after I noticed the same thing (Wiktionary:Tea room/2019/December#girl_and_boy_plants,_etc). - -sche (discuss) 04:03, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
- Further relevant discussion: Wiktionary:Tea room/2020/February#woman. - -sche (discuss) 23:51, 16 February 2020 (UTC)
Deletion discussion 2
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RFD sense 6 only: "A familiar way of addressing a female dog."
Well let's look at it this way. "Girl" could be used to "address a female {anything}." This same sense can be applied to humans, cats (a little more rare, but still), birds (much more rare even than that), or even gorillas. With humans, for instance, (in this I'll use an infant): "'Good girl! You used the potty!' the mom said." Girl is already a familiar way to address a female, especially a young one, so applying the female dog sense doesn't make much sense. I mean, I can see why the user did, since it is very often used in the case of dogs, but still is just a slight extension of the original meaning. If we have this definition, should we also have under it "A familiar way of addressing a female cat.", "A familiar way of addressing a female gorilla.", "A familiar way of addressing a female rabbit.", etc.? Philmonte101 (talk) 02:56, 21 July 2016 (UTC)
- Removed. I expanded the first definition to cover animals. SemperBlotto (talk) 10:00, 21 July 2016 (UTC)
- "Clever girl". Jurassic Park (1993). bd2412 T 12:35, 21 July 2016 (UTC)
RFV discussion: February–September 2016
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Rfv-sense: A girl friend.
I'd like to know if this is used in a platonic context. As I've heard it being used more in platonic than romantic. In the mean time I will find quotations myself. Ubuntuuser13 (talk) 03:07, 16 February 2016 (UTC)
- Definition one ("a young female human") and two ("any woman, regardless of her age") and five cover non-romantic use, do they not? Are there citations where "girl" distinctively means "a female friend" and not "a female (who may or may not be a friend)"? That might clarify matters. As it is, it seems like someone calling a female friend a "girl" is comparable to someone calling a blond-haired friend a "blond" — it doesn't cause "blond" to mean "a blond-haired friend", it's just the general definition. Usage like "girl, let's go see Andy!" seems like sense 5, the term of endearment. - -sche (discuss) 03:17, 16 February 2016 (UTC)
- One and two are not, but five may be. That's one way to see it. Ubuntuuser13 (talk) 04:07, 16 February 2016 (UTC)
- I suspect what's being questioned is whether it can mean non-romantic friend in conjunction with a possessive: Can "She's my girl" and "Joanne's my sister's girl" refer to a platonic friend? —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 06:18, 16 February 2016 (UTC)
- I would normally surmise from X(possessive) + girl that there was a romantic relationship, not necessarily sexual, between X and the referent of girl. I might further surmise that girl meant "best girl"/"the only one".
- This doesn't seem like a semantic property of girl or of any single possessive word. There could be a semantic property of personal possessives in general that is needed to make the surmises.
- That means that I do not think it is likely to prove a conventional use of girl to mean a non-romantic friend when used with a possessive, though some may use it that way, possibly to confuse or conceal.
- BTW, in my idiolect, romantic and platonic are not antonyms, whereas platonic and sexual are and romantic and sexual overlap. DCDuring TALK 12:56, 16 February 2016 (UTC)
- From what you've said, yes, they do refer to a platonic friend. Ubuntuuser13 (talk) 21:22, 16 February 2016 (UTC)
- RFV failed. —Mr. Granger (talk • contribs) 20:58, 4 September 2016 (UTC)
old Tea Room discussion (sarcastic-ish sense)
Wiktionary:Tea_room/2015/February#girl. (Sense has been removed per that discussion. Cf Einstein, Sherlock.) - -sche (discuss) 15:13, 3 June 2018 (UTC)
RFV discussion: June–July 2018
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LGBT slang: used by (some) gay men to address each other. I've seen it around social media a lot but can't find any good cites. Might be a usage notes thing rather than a sense, idk. – Julia (talk) • formerly Gormflaith • 19:00, 3 June 2018 (UTC)
- Don't they use "bitch" too? It seems more a general usage practice (referring to gay men as though they were female) and less a property of this particular word. Equinox ◑ 23:31, 3 June 2018 (UTC)
- I've only really heard "girl", but I'm not a gay man. I think it might fall into the class of "gendered" terms (e.g. dude, bro, bitch, guy, etc.) have become more gender-neutral. But, the perceived gender (or lack thereof) depends on the context, like the use of girl. Should these all be in usage notes? Or considered a "sarcastic" usage? – Julia (talk) • formerly Gormflaith • 02:15, 4 June 2018 (UTC)
- Other female-coded words that gay men may use for each other: babe, honey, girlfriend. Our girl entry doesn't mention "used by gay people to address each other" either in a sense or in the usage notes. Appendix:Cultural pragmatics?? Equinox ◑ 16:50, 5 June 2018 (UTC)
- I was thinking about this this morning. I agree that it's more of a cultural thing. Some other things like this that I was pondering:
- noun → verb zero derivation: Like weird 20-somethings saying "omg I can't even adult!!!" (= "I don't know how to be an adult")
- (idk what the ling term for this is): Do you like him or do you like like him?
- reclaiming slurs (though this might be for usage notes)
- (usually older women) calling everyone "honey", "darling", etc. in the South, but it would be weird in the North (US)
- Ideally an appendix might be good but I think it'd be hard to make. And might be beyond the scope of an online dictionary. – Julia ☺ • formerly Gormflaith • 17:22, 5 June 2018 (UTC)
- I was thinking about this this morning. I agree that it's more of a cultural thing. Some other things like this that I was pondering:
- "Do you LIKE-like him" is contrastive focus reduplication. (But we have an entry for "like like", lol.) Equinox ◑ 17:43, 5 June 2018 (UTC)
- Oops. But it can be used with almost anything. party vs party party = lowkey party vs big house party / jacket vs jacket jacket = quarter zip vs winter coat. "like like" might be more idiomatic tho. I feel like this is like Category:English elongated forms, which I think is pointless but whatever. – Julia ☺ • formerly Gormflaith • 17:55, 5 June 2018 (UTC)
- "Do you LIKE-like him" is contrastive focus reduplication. (But we have an entry for "like like", lol.) Equinox ◑ 17:43, 5 June 2018 (UTC)
- This does seem like it may be a general practice of (jocularly/affectionately) referring to other gay men as if they are female, since so many other terms in the same vein are also used, as Equinox notes, up to and including the "gay she" (which might deserve an entry like royal we)—referring to other gay men with "she"/"her" pronouns. Compare Wiktionary:Tea_room/2015/February#girl, about derogatory references to boys/men as "girls" e.g. by drill sergeants. However, it might be useful to add an interjection sense, defined somewhat like dude but with the note that it refers especially to a woman rather than especially to a man, to cover things like "girl! I love your hair!" etc (spoken to women, gay men, etc). - -sche (discuss) 17:56, 5 June 2018 (UTC)
- Yeah, for some reason girl is on my watchlist and I saw you add the discussion to the talk page. Which inspired this RFV thing. I think the interjection usage notes should be there, but then again, we'd have to add it to every word with this property. And speaking of "gay she", "he/him lesbians" are a thing too apparently, but it might just be within Tumblr, lol. – Julia ☺ • formerly Gormflaith • 18:05, 5 June 2018 (UTC)
- Bi men also use this, as do other flavours of LGBTQ generally in my experience. It's just sorta camp I guess, not specifically gay. I somewhat frequently use it to refer to my heterosexual male friends. — Mnemosientje (t · c) 22:59, 5 June 2018 (UTC)
- At the risk of straying overly far from the original topic, this reminds me that gay has a broad sense by which it's synonymous with queer, and historically even with LGBT-including-the-T, which I've been trying to find enough citations of for a while, if anyone wants to help. It's just...difficult to find citations that can't be interpreted as the now-more-common sense. - -sche (discuss) 23:16, 5 June 2018 (UTC)
- The sense was apparently never added to the entry, and per discussion above it seems like a broader phenomenon not specific to this word, so I'm closing this as "sense not added". - -sche (discuss) 07:39, 28 July 2018 (UTC)
- If anyone decides to add this "gay man" sense, there is a citation (from Queer London) in the slap entry. Equinox ◑ 19:33, 2 June 2022 (UTC)
offensive
Unlike for a night out with the boys, "Microsoft® Encarta® 2009" also states :
woman of any age, especially one who is a friend or contemporary, or who is younger than the speaker (informal) (often considered offensive) a night out with the girls
Why is that so? --Backinstadiums (talk) 09:41, 17 August 2019 (UTC)
- I don't think it would ever be offensive if a woman used it this way. If a man does it, I suppose it's considered condescending or infantilising. Equinox ◑ 14:06, 17 August 2019 (UTC)
- It reminds me of Wiktionary:Tea room/2019/March#Implications_of_lady_vs._woman; I suspect a lot of it comes down to things like tone of voice and the specific power dynamics present when it's said, which a dictionary can't necessarily note (e.g. in the lady vs woman situation). FWIW, "boy" can also be offensive, if e.g. a white man says it to a (potentially somewhat younger-than-the-speaker but still adult) black man (as that entry notes!). - -sche (discuss) 15:54, 3 December 2019 (UTC)
ety
Suggested PIE root for English "girl", *ǵʰer-, seems to be utterly wrong — This unsigned comment was added by 2406:3003:2005:40b:9cac:3b75:2f2a:5f8 (talk) at 23:18, 9 December 2021.
This κόρη, Ancient Greek word, must be mentioned, surely. 46.211.72.250 05:39, 10 December 2021 (UTC)