A Dictionary of Epithets and Terms of Address
This can be used by parents to their daughter, but it is probably more often used to an adult woman by a man or woman of her own age. Its use perhaps becomes more affectionate as the age of the woman addressed increases. Working-class husbands in Britain are likely to use it as a flattering term to their wives. Women friends defy time by using it to one another.
Notable uses in Shakespeare include the Nurse’s comment to thirteen-year-old Juliet: ‘Go, girl, seek happy nights to happy days,’ and Cleopatra’s comment to her attendants about Caesar: ‘He words me, girls, he words me.’ In former times ‘girl’ was the usual way of addressing a young maid-servant, often with the implication that if the girl concerned had a name, it was of no interest to the speaker.
As a simple generic term, ‘girl’ can of course be given meaning by other words used in conjunction with it. Julia, in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, addresses her waiting woman as ‘girl’, but also calls her ‘gentle girl’ and ‘gentle Lucetta’. Celia calls her cousin Rosalind ‘sweet girl’ in As You Like It. A comment on the modern flattering use of ‘girl’ to a grown woman occurs in Border Country, by Raymond Williams: ‘“Come on, you two girls.” “Girls indeed,” Ellen laughed, walking up with Eira. “Well, we look it, anyhow, Auntie.”’ The youngest of these two women is in her thirties. In the same novel is an example of ‘girl’ used affectionately by a Welsh husband to his wife, who uses ‘Mister’ as an endearment in return. Up the City Road, by John Stroud, has several examples of a London girl in her late teens being addressed as ‘girl’ by young men of her own age, always in a friendly way.
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