Specific meaning of "female child" is late 14c. "Probably most of them arose as jocular transferred uses of words that had originally different meaning".
Like boy, lass, lad it is of more or less obscure origin. A former folk-etymology derivation from Latin garrulus "chattering, talkative" is now discarded.
The g-r words denote young animals, children, and all kinds of creatures considered immature, worthless, or past their prime.Īnother candidate is Old English gierela "garment" (for possible sense evolution in this theory, compare brat). The final consonant in girl is a diminutive suffix. It is part of a large group of Germanic words whose root begins with a g or k and ends in r. Liberman (2008) writes: Girl does not go back to any Old English or Old Germanic form. One guess 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. 1300, gyrle "child, young person" (of either sex but most frequently of females), of unknown origin.
0 kommentar(er)
