A girl is a young female human , usually a child or an adolescent. While the term girl has other meanings, including young woman , [1] daughter [2] or girlfriend [1] regardless of age, the first meaning is the most common one.
The treatment and status of girls in any society is usually closely related to the status of women in that culture. In cultures where women have or had a low social position, girls may be unwanted by their parents, and society may invest less in girls. The difference in girls' and boys' upbringing ranges from slight to completely different. Mixing of the sexes may vary by age, and from totally mixed to total sex segregation.
The English word girl first appeared during the Middle Ages between and CE and came from the Anglo-Saxon word gerle also spelled girle or gurle. The word girl is sometimes used to refer to an adult female, usually a younger one. This usage may be considered derogatory or disrespectful in professional or other formal contexts, just as the term boy can be considered disparaging when applied to an adult man.
Hence, this usage is often deprecative. However, girl can also be a professional designation for a woman employed as a model or other public feminine representative such as a showgirl , and in such cases is not generally considered derogatory. In a casual context, the word has positive uses, as evidenced by its use in titles of popular music.
It has been used playfully for people acting in an energetic fashion Canadian singer Nelly Furtado 's " Promiscuous Girl " or as a way of unifying women of all ages on the basis of their once having been girls American country singer Martina McBride 's " This One's for the Girls ".
