Standard Lemma guide
Definitions and examples are grouped by meaning. Pronunciation, history, word forms, translations, descendants, synonyms, antonyms, derived terms, and related words appear whenever the source provides them.
Sound
Each Play button uses your device's default local English voice, or a natural local fallback. The selected voice name appears after playback. This is synthesized speech, not a source recording.
adj
Characteristic of, or pertaining to, a girl or girls.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Usage: derogatory, formal
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Synonyms: girlish, girllike, girly, puelline
Antonyms: ungirlish, ungirly
History
From Latin puella (“female child, girl”) + English -ile (suffix meaning ‘capable of; tending to’ forming adjectives), modelled after puerile. Puella is derived from puellus (“male child, young boy”) + -a (feminine form of -us); puellus is a contraction of puerulus (“little boy; little slave”), from puer (“boy, lad; male page, servant, or slave; child”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *peh2w- (“few, little; smallness”)) + -ulus (“suffix forming diminutives of nouns indicating small size or youth”).
