Using the word 'girl' - what does this mean

[Marie0001]

Hi all

I'm curious to know what you might mean when you use the word 'girl' or someone uses the word 'girl' ie how would you define it based on your usage or how you hear others using it .. the sex, age of the person etc

Don't want to say too much as I am just curious to hear what you all think!

Thanks!

Interesting. I sometimes use girls or ladies when talking to my bees. They are overwhelmingly female (tens of thousands female to a couple of hundred male) So there's a layer of meaning in girls and ladies that doesn't relate to age or being human but does relate to sex. I think in that context I'm using girls as a term of affection and ladies as a term of respect.

A female aged under 16 - a girl.

But then I do refer to girls nights out for me and my friends, and I'm in my 40s. I need to watch that.

In general I use "girl" to mean under female child or teen.

However, I also refer to my children who are in their early and mid twenties as "the girls" and often address them collectively (and their similarly aged cousins or friends) as "girls".
Got into trouble recently for doing that on a big family get together when I forgot that two of the cousins were in fact boys!

My father (now dead, but would be in his late 90s) always referred to female colleagues as "girls". I tried to train him out of it but didn't succeed. He was an engineer in a working environment where all the men were engineers, scientists and apprentices and all the women were secretaries, cleaners or canteen staff. I don't know if he would have referred to a female engineer as a girl because there weren't any. I suspect not though. He certainly didn't refer to female GP as a girl.

As late as the 70s early 80s it was considered rude to describe someone as a woman. "Lady" was used when being polite to someone, particular in a service job like a shop assistant or waitress.

For strangers -- I'd probably use it of the under-20s.

For my friends' kids, I'd use it of all their daughters under about 25 ('Hi Jo, how are your girls getting on?'), except for the growing number whose daughters call themselves men. Even then, I have to stop and think before automatically calling them what I've always called them.

There parts of Ireland (the Republic) where the word girl would have been a colloquialism. I found it weird as a kid when my granny was talking to female relatives and they would refer to each other as girl. In Cork the word boy would be a colloquialism still. I guess for that reason it rarely annoys me when people say it.

I do find that a certain group of people online are all about calling themselves girls even though their age makes it very, very odd.

OP, yes, my male boss used to refer to my all-female team as 'girls'. I told him off. More than once. He didn't really get it, but I was surprised by how strongly I felt about it. It just didn't feel right in a professional environment.

Young female, up to about 16 or so. Although, I will probably refer to my 16 yr old DD and her best friend as 'the girls' when asking DH to pick them up even when they are older than they are now.

My mum is in her 70s, and talks about 'the girl on the till'. I believe her age cut off is prob mid 30s.

DH and his siblings are all 50+, his mum still calls them 'the kids'.

I hate it when someone refers to me as a girl. I’m a woman in my mid thirties with kids, I’m not a girl. It gets right on my tits

A female child.

Unpopular opinion on here but I use girls to refer to me and my friends, 'girls night out' etc. So do they.

It's also all about context. It's very common for my friends to say things like 'there's this girl I work with...' and I know she's referring to an adult. For the opposite sex in this context I'd say 'guy' instead of 'man'. 'The guys at work' flows better to me than 'the men at work'.

When I'm actually taking about a minor I tend to say 'little girl' or 'teenage girl' if the meaning isn't obvious from the context.

Sometimes women in their twenties say it to each other. As in "girl, you're not wrong!" No idea why.

@NotAnotherBathBomb But why not say "there's this woman I work with..." If it was an adult man she wouldn't call him a boy.

I refer to my close group of friends as girls, but then again we've been friends since schooldays so it's more by habit, I'm quite informal really and when talking about men I usually call them blokes 🤭

I just can't get het up over it.
Hi girls, Hi ladies, better than hi bitches.
There are many other things to worry about in this world.

Because is just not the way we speak. The OP asked what 'girl' means to us and I explained what it means me/group of 'girl'friends

A female human under 18, or a trans-identifying male of any age. This nonsense has really fucked with the English language...

I used to pull people up on it all the time but it got really boring so i just started using 'boy' for men.

Example : I follow womens football, but don't follow boys football.

Who's that boy you were with when I bumped into you yesterday? Oh that's my husband

Etc

Haha, yes the only time I use ‘ladies’ is when I talk to my chickens.

Years ago I would have addressed a group of women as ‘ladies’ or called an adult female a ‘girl’, but I’ve since learnt how important the language we use is in maintaining and enforcing boundaries and how easily those boundaries can be dismantled.

Under 16s are girls I would consider it mostly used for 13 and under after that its usually young woman