girlie adj.
1. of a woman, sexually alluring.
![]() | 🎵 He has the latest thing in collars, the latest thing in ties / The very latest specimen of girly girls with the latest blue, blue eyes . | [perf. Vesta Tilley] The Latest Chap on Earth|
![]() | 🎵 He’s got a way they can't resist / Many’s the girlie girl he’s kissed. | ‘ll the nice girls love Charley’|
![]() | How to Talk Dirty 177: I can’t see any girlie thing in horses. | |
![]() | Puberty Blues 7: The girls were skinny, hair-free, care-free and girlie. | |
![]() | Soho 237: Into view had swarmed a chattering bevy of American girlie students they looked like, with big tight-trousered bums. |
2. of a man, effeminate.
![]() | letter 16 Apr. in A Rocky Mountain Sailor In Teddy Roosevelt's Navy [ebook] With Welty it is different. He doesn’t imitate the opposite sex [...] and he is not a ‘girly boy’ at all, nor is he the kind of fellow that likes to be petted [...] on account of his good looks. | |
![]() | It’s Harder for Girls 50: He was a plump, rosy little chap, a bit girlie. | |
![]() | Everybody Smokes in Hell 103: Chad went girlie with himself. The honcho medal slid right off his chest. | |
![]() | PS, I Scored the Bridesmaids 50: It [i.e. a statement] comes out all, I don’t know, girly and basically bent. | |
![]() | Peepshow [ebook] He [...] had wanted to get a dolphin tatt until his friend George convinced him they were a bit girly. | |
![]() | What Fire Cannot Burn 156: It was the girliest drink Soledad’d ever seen. A queer alky mick going dry on St. Paddy’s Day wouldnt touch the stuff. |
3. (orig. US, also girl-girl, girlie-girlie) used of a young woman employed in some form of the sex or glamour industry.
![]() | in Variety 25 Nov. 23: The Adams act [...] is of the girly variety [HDAS]. | |
![]() | Great Magoo 173: He removes girlie carnival posters from the suitcase. | |
![]() | Bound for Glory (1969) 122: Climbing the old spitty steps that lead to the girly houses. | |
![]() | N.Y. Amsterdam News 17 Jan. 21: Clark Monroe’s Old Spotlite Club has a white girlie revue. | |
![]() | Parole Chief 119: He does calendar art: not the girlie-girlie sort, just locomotives and bears and trees. | |
![]() | One Hundred Dollar Misunderstanding 70: I puts the girl-girl ones [records] on the bottom. | |
![]() | Family 29: Father was horrified to find semi-nude girlie photos. |
In compounds
(orig. US) a bar or ‘nightclub’ at which the hostesses may double as prostitutes.
![]() | Palm Beach Post (FL) 13 Feb. 45/5: But the fun-loving GIs aren’t flocking to Phenix City like they did before Patterson’s death slammed the lid on the girlie bars . | |
![]() | Akron Beacon Jrnl (OH) 15 June 2/5: Federal Bankruptcy Court today order the immediate closing [...] of Sweeney’s Little Club, girlie bar and clip joint in downtown Cleveland [...] liquor agents had cited the place for using B-girls to solicit drinks from patrons. | |
![]() | Esquire 80 55: No such area of possible misunderstanding is present in that traditional Hong Kong institution, the girlie bar [...] This was home plate for Suzie Wong. | |
![]() | Sodom’s Second Coming 92: This bar was not only a ‘girlie bar’ but a ’rent-boy bar’ as well. The idea was not simply girls available for heterosexuals and young men for homosexuals, but everybody for everybody. | |
![]() | Sun. Tel. Mag. 12 Dec. 16: A strip of beer joints and girlie bars. | |
![]() | Price You Pay 12: Now they pay for a lot of coke and go to girly bars. |
(orig. US) a pin-up magazine.
![]() | Brooklyn Dly Eagle (NY) 28 July 5/8: The government has clamped down ongirlie magazines showing too much legs in photos. | |
![]() | On Broadway 28 Jan. [synd. col.] Publishers [...] will use their allotment of paper to start several new girlie mags. | |
![]() | Newsweek 34 50/2: One longtime girlie-book editor fondly patted a stack of pictures and smiled nostalgically. | |
![]() | Time 26 June 71: Liberty [...] was being sold to ‘one of those awful girlie books’. | |
![]() | N.Y. Times 19 June 40: Advertisements in ‘girly’ magazines. | |
![]() | Mad mag. Dec. 18: My father keeps sneaking girlie books into work. | |
![]() | Homosexuality & Citizenship in Florida 15: Much public hue and cry has been raised about the ‘girlie’ magazines draped across newsstands. | |
![]() | Dly Indep. Jrnl (San Rafael, CA) 9 Oct. 43/3: The old horror comic mags that were verboten for Junior before they were pushed off the newsstand shelves by girlie rags. | |
![]() | How to Talk Dirty 53: If a girlie book was all that was left as a document of this generation. | |
![]() | Inner City Hoodlum 12: Wilbur went back to the bathroom with his girlie magazine and satisfied himself. | |
![]() | Detroit Free Press 7 Dec. 29/1: [TV listings] (42) House Calls: ‘Nude Girl in Town’. Nurtse is canned for baring her all in a ‘girlie’ rag. | |
![]() | Doing Time 125: Some prisoners have their cells plastered with girlie pictures to help their sexual fantasies. | |
![]() | Sky Ray Lolly 55: Girlie Mags. | |
![]() | Rivethead (1992) 150: These grumps gulped coffee, [...] pawed through girlie rags and sat out the death march of the minute hand. | |
![]() | Guardian Rev. 17 July 7: He’d never bought a girlie magazine before. | |
![]() | Plainclothes Naked (2002) 122: Merch sat wheezing behind his desk, thumbing through a girly mag. | |
![]() | Cherry Pie [ebook] He’d been a journo for the girly magazine Picture. | |
![]() | Corruption Officer [ebk] cap. 36: One of Flocko’s soldiers comes up and hands ther guy a girlie magazine. |
(US) a young man who is popular with girls.
![]() | in Times (Richmond, VA) 17 Nov. 18/5: In this same Town there was a Boy who was Aces and Eights with the Girls. At every Opportunity the Men would get in a few mean Hooks on the girlie-Boy and the young women would [...] say they didnt care, he was awful Nice, so there! |
(US) peepshow film projectors showing pornographic loops.
![]() | Hoodlums (2021) 105: The girlie machines were in back [...] machines that showed the small dime and nickel movies. |
(orig. US) a strip show, or show which features unclothed or semi-clothed women.
![]() | Leavenworth Times (KS) 29 Sept. 4/3: ‘The Imperials Abroad’, [...] composed mostly of women and heralded as a ‘girlie show’, played to a packed house of males at the Orpheum. There were some shapely young women . | |
![]() | Mag. of Business 37 486/1: Just the same sort of thing as the tired business man and the girlie-girlie show. | |
![]() | Honor Bright 9: (Reading aloud) ‘Snap It Up! Girlie Show!’ (More slowly) ‘An Eye-blinding Array of Seventy Captivatin’ Cooties.’ God forgi'e me! Michael. Cooties! (Looks.) No: ’tis not cooties — ’tis cutiesl! | |
![]() | Dict. Amer. Sl. 30: leg-show. Refined dancing and near-singing girlie show, patronized by successful bald-heads. | |
![]() | (ref. to 1930) Amer. Mag. 135 115: He [i.e. Bud Abbott] was taking tickets at the Empire Theater in Brooklyn in 1930 when Costello was booked in to enliven a girlie show called Legs and Laughter. | |
![]() | Preview Film Album 43/1: After the match at Wembley, the men of Barfield visited a girlie-girlie show at a certain London theatre which specialises in such entertainment for gentlemen visiting the big city on their own. | |
![]() | Night They Raided Minsky’s 98: We can’t put a girlie show in the Garden. On the Bowery, O.K. But not Houston Street. We’re a family house. | |
![]() | (con. 1930s) Playboy in Texas Stories (1995) 138: Stick around for the girlie show. | ‘The Last Carousel’ from|
![]() | In Search of the Monkey Girl 62: I said, ‘Look, Randy, I think I'm going to go to the girlie show tonight.’ He said, ‘No, you can't do that.’ And I said, ‘Why? This is getting spicy. What do you mean I can't go to the girlie show?’. | |
![]() | All that Glitters 65: In my ignorance, I’d not realised that the new ‘girlie’ show at the Nell Gwynne, was to be a ‘strip show’. | |
![]() | Shooting in the Dark (2002) 62: He’d gone with some mates to a girlie show. |
In phrases
(US) in sexual orientation, lesbian.
![]() | Streets of N.Y. 29: This girl asked me if I was ‘strictly dickly or girly pearly.’ Before I jumped on her, I asked her to clarify her question. She said it meant just what I figured, if I liked boys or girls. |