girl n.1
1. a prostitute, orig. street-walking, from 19C also in a brothel.
 | ‘Westminster Wedding’ n.p.: Luteners-Lane it was never so grac’t With so many Girls of the game. | |
![[UK]](/static/img/flags/uk.png "United Kingdom") | ‘New Made Gentlewoman’ in Roxburghe Ballads (1874) II 380: A Girl of the Game. | |
| ‘Bonny Milk-Maid’ Pepys Ballads (1987) V 211: The Girls of Venus Game That ventures health and fame. | |
| Night-Walker Oct. 18 : [I have] often heard that all the Whores in Town are Jacobites, and now I perceive something of the reason of it, I find they are your best Customers, but I believe if the truth were known they neither enrich you by their Trade, nor increase the number of Jacobites by their Converse with your Girls as you call them. | |
![[Scot]](/static/img/flags/sco.png "Scotland") | Blackwood’s Mag. in DSUE (1984). | |
![[US]](/static/img/flags/us.png "United States") | Whip & Satirist of NY & Brooklyn (NY) 15 Jan. n.p.: Cam to the conclusion [...] that as soon as night came, we would take a round among the girls. | |
| Sam Sly 14 Apr. 3/2: We recommend a young Capt. C—h—k not to kiss the ‘girls’ at ‘Knowle’s,’ the Kerrison Hotel, Waterloo-street. | |
| Manchester Spy (NH) 14 Sept. n.p.: THe is of the opinion that there are some strange girls who board in the long block on Hanover street. | |
| [Arthur Pember] Mysteries and Miseries 60: [T]he negro servant [...] whispered that one of the girls had just passed the house with a sucker. | |
| Mirror of Life 19 May 14/4: ‘My sporting blood was up, and from that time forward I’ve been one of the girls. That is how your Amy became a tart’. | |
| Illinois Crime Survey 861: Disorderly houses around Twenty-second and State Streets were doing a good business. In one block it was reported that one hundred girls were employed. | |
![[Aus]](/static/img/flags/aus.png "Australia") | Tramp and Other Stories 86: There’s the bar and the travellers — and what the girls make — you bet she gets a cut out of that. | |
| ‘Third Street’s Going Down’ 🎵 The city hired Mr Keeler to put a highway though that part of town, / The law told the girls to move. | |
| Wide Boys Never Work (1938) 62: The girls don’t want any trouble. | |
| Phenomena in Crime 151: The ‘girls’ and ‘madams’ of the West End are catered for. | |
| Vanity Row 217: ‘You like a little fun tonight, mister? [...] Two new joints just opened on North Baxter. New girls [...] Hollywood poontang’. | |
| Lowlife (2001) 147: Look how quickly they got the girls off the streets. | |
| Patolman 190: [T]he department had yielded to the pressure of constant complaints about the mass of prostitutes that flooded the midtown area every night by concentrating a large number of uniformed men in that section [...] Their main function was to harass the girls and so keep them off the street. |
2. (US) constr. with the, a girl or woman whose lifestyle is seen as exceeding respectable social norms.
| ‘Paris Inside Out’ in Nat. Police Gaz. (NY) 23 Dec. 6/2: Various were the suggestions of the ‘boys,’ and of the ‘girls,’ too, as to the disposal of the $3,500. |
3. (US) used in direct address to a man, without homosexual implication.
| Checkers 28: ‘Say, girls, look at Grady,’ yelled Checkers. | |
| ‘Drifting North’ in Cattle Brands 🌐 ‘Now, girls,’ said Baugh, addressing Carter and the stranger, ‘I’ve made you a bed out of the wagon-sheet.’. | |
| Family Arsenal 141: ‘Dear girl,’ said Lady Arrow, ‘I do believe he’s frightened you.’. |
4. (Aus./US) an insult or joc. term of address aimed at a heterosexual male.
| Sport (Adelaide) 6 Nov. 5/6: Sport saw Albert H (the big girl) and Joe G going in the back way to the central. Frightened to let people see you drink, boys? | |
| (con. 1965-66) Rumor of War 290: We heard Gunnery Sergeant Strong’s voice: [...] ‘Knock off the chatter, girls, and get your asses on the trucks’. | |
| Life Its Ownself 195: ‘I might wink at a couple of linebackers and say, “Here I come, girls, y’all ready?”’ . | |
| 8 Ball Chicks (1998) 35: ‘Bitch,’ ‘girl,’ or ‘faggot’ are the worst insults one can sling at a man. | |
| Black Tide (2012) [ebook] [of footballers] Two of these Tiger girls get in front of Bill. He’s taken to the air. | |
| Turning Angel 163: He’s always fixing his hair and asking me how it looks. He’s such a girl. | |
| (con. 1964) Life 8: These truckers with crew cuts and tattoos [...] call us girls because of the long hair. ‘How you doing, girls? Dance with me?’. |
5. (also gal, girlie) a male homosexual, esp. a prostitute; also used in direct address as an insult or term of endearment.
| Grimhaven 38: Why, he’s queer. He’s one of the gals. | |
| Gas-House McGinty 79: Now, Mac, is that the way to treat a girlie [male homosexual] that wants to warm up to you. | |
| Sex in Prison 84: The ‘wolves’ or ‘top men’ housed among the normal inmates in the prison, who ‘spot’ those among the younger prisoners whom they wish to make their ‘girls,’ and who ‘court’ them. | |
| et al. Gay Girl’s Guide 10: girl: [...] used loosely by homosexuals with reference to themselves and their friends. | |
| Gaedicker’s Sodom-on-the-Hudson 3: If you insist on being filthy, girl, make your own comparison. | |
| (con. 1920s) Hoods (1953) 64: ‘You men thertainly are [handsome]’ [...] ‘That’s enough, girls. Scram. Take a powder.’. | |
| Homosexual Society 47: Some call-boys may live together and help each other out when someone is needed to be the heart and soul of some ‘gay’ party or when the sugar daddies want to rustle up what are euphemistically called ‘the girls’. [Ibid.] 89: I was a girl throughout my childhood. My parents knew I was a queer years before I did. | |
| Bad (1995) 52: Most everyone started harassing him right away, calling him ‘girl’ and ‘pink’. | |
| (con. 1940s) Hold Tight (1990) 66: You can’t guess what it means to a girl to be loved like that. | |
| Hot House 190: [To male prisoners] ‘Women are dirty-legs, cunts, weaklings. Part of it has to do with guys who get fucked in prison. Everyone calls them ‘girls’ or ‘punks’ . | |
| Rebecca’s Dict. of Queer Sl. 🌐 girl — 1) a femme submissive or bottom, frequently one who roleplays as young 2) a gay man. | |
![[SA]](/static/img/flags/sa.png "South Africa") | Gayle 72/1: girl n. term of endearment (So what are you doing tonight, girl?). | |
| ‘Vilja de Tanquay Exults’ in Queer Street 300: It wouldn’t occur to a single / One of them [...] to sock a girl / To a meal once in a way. | |
| Line of Beauty 65: ‘Oh my god, it's the fucking Home Secretary. [...] Gotta go, girl!’. |
6. (gay) used as an affectionate term of address between two homosexual men.
| et al. Gay Girl’s Guide 10: girl: As a vocative, synonymous with darling. | |
| (con. 1950s) My Lives 111: Where’d you learn to swallow it [i.e. semen], girl? |
7. (US, also gal) a queen of any suit in cards.
| Mules and Men (1995) 142: dealer: ‘Heah’s a good card – a queen.’ He tossed the card to Hardy. hardy: ‘Aw naw, Ah don’t play dem gals till way late in de night’. |
8. (US black) a general form of address between two women, irrespective of age.
| & al. Color & Human Nature 232: When I see the word maid, why, girl, let me tell you, it just runs through me! | |
| Runnin’ Down Some Lines 70: Girl, lemme run it down to you. | |
| Lucky You 101: ‘And they build malls?’ ‘Girl, they build everything.’. | |
| ‘Fun and Games’ 🌐 ‘Damnnnn, girl!’ Her older friend had said. ‘Your parents sound like they are way cool, you know.’. | |
| Henrietta Lacks 233: ‘Get ready, girl,’ she said. ‘You got no idea what you gettin yourself into’. | |
| Fabulosa 293/1: girl general term of address. |
In compounds
see under scout n.
a brothel.
| Sl. and Its Analogues. |
In phrases
a street-walking prostitute.
| One Man’s Initiation (1920) 88: [G]irls of the street, giggling alluringly in hoarse, dissipated tones, clutching the arms of drunken sailors, tilting themselves temptingly in men's way . |
a street-walking prostitute.
| ‘The Unconscionable Gallant’ n.p.: Half a piece [i.e. ten shillings] is too much for a poor single touch [...] to give more than a Crown for a bit of the Brown / I can have it for less off the Girls of the Town. | |
| ‘The Old Fumbler’ in Merry Songs and Ballads (1897) n.p.: Smug, rich and fantastick old Fumbler was known, / That wedded a Juicy brisk Girl of the Town. | |
| Spectator 187 4 Oct. II 57: The famous Girl about Town called Kitty; this Creature [...] was my Mistress in the Days when Keeping was in Fashion. | |
| ‘Armour’ in Potent Ally 5: [footnote] Colonel Condom was the Inventor of What is vulgarly called a C----m, alias armour, by the Girls of the Town. | |
| The Commissary 19: That eternal trotter after all the little draggle-tail’d girls of town. | |
| Memoirs of Susannah Hill in Modern Propensities 8: It is inconceivable what difficulties many of these wretched females, denominated girls of the town, endure. | |
![[Ire]](/static/img/flags/ire.png "Ireland") | Spirit of Irish Wit 138: A girl of the town, in Dublin, walking the pavement [...] in pursuit of her ‘avocations’. | |
| Life in London (1869) 212: [note] A universal phrase with the girls of the Town for ‘their Keepers’. | |
| ‘Love in a Watch Box’ in Fal-Lal Songster in Spedding & Watt (eds) Bawdy Songbooks (2011) III 12: Some wags twigg’d this girl of the town / [...] / And, out of a lark, knock’d the watch box down. | |
| Wkly Rake (NY) 18 June n.p.: wants to know [...] Is there any nice fat, good-looking, well educated, respectable girl girl [sic] of the town, who wants to be provided for this winter. | |
| Sam Sly 27 Jan. 2/1: We advise Mr. Charles Cl—k [...] to leave off associating with girls of the town. | |
| [G. Thompson] Bristol Bill 36/1: Bill also gained the affections [...] of a young ‘girl of the town,’ [...] and she afterwards became his mistress. | |
| Cheshire Obs. 3 Dec. 4/2: Ann Kene, a girl about town, was brought up on a charge of stealing a pocket-book. | |
| Chester Chron. 18 Jan. 2/4: Luca Ceecavelli [...] strikes up an acquaintance with Marta Marietta, an unfortunate girl about town. | |
| ‘The Watch on the Kerb’ in Roderick (1967–9) I 10: Never, O never / Let courage go down; / Keep from the river, / O Girl of the Town! | |
| ‘Ruth’ in Roderick (1967–9) II 25: Would I shrink from the eyes of the clown — / From the eyes of the sawney who’d boast of success with a girl of the town. |
(US) of a man, to make another man behave as a passive rather than an active homosexual, to subject another man to anal intercourse or fellatio.
| Fortress of Solitude 433: It wasn’t a big deal to suck a little dick now and then, so long as nobody girled you out. |
SE in slang uses
In compounds
1. (orig. US) a feminine young man, an effeminate homosexual boy; also as a general insult.
| Albion’s England Bk 5 vi 115: Girle-boyes, fauouring Ganimaede, heere with his Lord a Guest. | |
| Englands Heroical Epistles 18/2: And in my place vpon this regal throne, To set that girle-boy, wanton Gaueston. | |
| in Discourse of Marriage and Wiving B4: There’s some whose prostituted beauty walkes, Like Ganimeds or girle-boyes. | |
| in Harper’s Mag. Mar. 542/2: My father used to call him the girl-boy; but he was fonder of him than of all us others . | |
| How to Tell a Story 191: A few of the coquetter variants [...] the girl-boy. | |
| Manhattan Transfer 97: ‘That’s enough, Herfy’s licked.’ ‘Girlboy . . . Girlboy.’. | |
| (con. 1900s–10s) 42nd Parallel in USA (1966) 84: Gotta fight him [...] if not you’re a girlboy. |
2. (US prison) a heterosexual prisoner engaging in homosexual acts.
| Queens’ Vernacular 161: sexually oppressed, constantly raped victim; usually straight [...] girl boy. | |
| Killing Time 173: It was better after that because the riders took one of the girl-boys over in the cotton trailer for a little romping. | |
| Doing Time 190: girl-boy: the person who takes the female role in a homosexual relationship; a cat. |
the penis.
| Sl. and Its Analogues. |
see deb n.2
see separate entry.
an effeminate male.
| Sl. and Its Analogues. |
(US black) seducing young women.
| Cocaine True 127: I’m gonna buy me a pair of white leather Reeboks and a sweatsuit, and I’m gonna go girl hoppin’. |
(US) a burlesque entertainment feature chorus girls, dancers, etc.
| ‘Casual Observer’ in Charlotte Obs. (NC) 24 Feb. 8/7: Hire a bevy of Broadway Broads and frame a girl show [but] the nut would be better than two grand a week. | |
| Pikes Peek or Bust 186: ‘Jacksonville sure was a blank [...] All the flat joints were kicked over, and the girl show was sloughed twice’ . |
In phrases
see separate entry.
to go out looking for female companionship and possible seduction.
| Session Papers of the Central Criminal Court 10 Jan. 🌐 The maid said two men were missing, and the others said, G–d d–n them, they are gone a-girling. | |
| Gaudy Night (1944) 251: She remembered [...] an expression in use among the irreverent: ‘to catch a Senior girling’. |