girl

• n. 女孩；姑娘，未婚女子；女職員，女演員；（男人的）女朋友
• n. （捷）吉爾

詞源不詳。

girl

girl: [13] Where girl comes from is one of the unsolved puzzles of English etymology. What is at least clear is that originally it meant ‘child’ in general rather than specifically ‘female child’ (a mid 15th-century text refers to knave-gerlys ‘male children’), but where it came from is not known. Among suggestions for words that may be connected are Low German göre ‘child, kid’ and Norwegian dialect gurre ‘lamb’.

girl (n.)

c. 1300, gyrle "child, young person" (of either sex but most frequently of females), of unknown origin. One guess [OED] leans toward an unrecorded Old English *gyrele, from Proto-Germanic *gurwilon-, diminutive of *gurwjoz (apparently also represented by Low German gære "boy, girl," Norwegian dialectal gorre, Swedish dialectal gurre "small child," though the exact relationship, if any, between all these is obscure), from PIE *ghwrgh-, also found in Greek parthenos "virgin." But this involves some objectionable philology. Liberman (2008) writes:

Girl does not go back to any Old English or Old Germanic form. It is part of a large group of Germanic words whose root begins with a g or k and ends in r. The final consonant in girl is a diminutive suffix. The g-r words denote young animals, children, and all kinds of creatures considered immature, worthless, or past their prime.

Another candidate is Old English gierela "garment" (for possible sense evolution in this theory, compare brat). A former folk-etymology derivation from Latin garrulus "chattering, talkative" is now discarded. Like boy, lass, lad it is of more or less obscure origin. "Probably most of them arose as jocular transferred uses of words that had originally different meaning" [OED]. Specific meaning of "female child" is late 14c. Applied to "any young unmarried woman" since mid-15c. Meaning "sweetheart" is from 1640s. Old girl in reference to a woman of any age is recorded from 1826. Girl next door as a type of unflashy attractiveness is recorded by 1953.

Doris [Day] was a big vocalist even before she hit the movies in 1948. There, as the latest movie colony "girl next door," sunny-faced Doris soon became a leading movie attraction as well as the world's top female recording star. "She's the girl next door, all right," said one Hollywood admirer. "Next door to the bank." ["Life" magazine, Dec. 22, 1958]

Girl Friday "resourceful young woman assistant" is from 1940, a reference to "Robinson Crusoe." Girl Scout is from 1909. For the usual Old English word, see maiden.

1. The word " girl " is derived from Middle English " girle ".

“ girl ” 這個詞是由中世紀英文中的 “ girle ” 來的.

來自《現代漢英綜合大詞典》

2. She was a shy, delicately pretty girl with enormous blue eyes.

她是一個害羞、嬌美的女孩，長著一雙大大的藍眼睛。

來自柯林斯例句

3. Derek is now the proud father of a bouncing baby girl.

德裏克現在為有一個健康活潑的女寶寶而驕傲。

來自柯林斯例句

4. They saw the man with a little girl skipping along behind him.

他們看見那個男人身後還跟著一個蹦蹦跳跳的小姑娘。

來自柯林斯例句

5. Anyone would think you were in love with the girl.

誰都會以為你和那個姑娘戀愛了。

來自柯林斯例句