Christine Lemmer-Webber@cwebber@social.coop

this is a real thing dictionaryblog.cambridge.org/2

> Girl itself evolved in much the same way. The word originally referred to a child of either sex. Back then, prior to the sixteenth century, girls generally were divided into knave girls, which were boys, and gay girls, which were female girls.

EDIT: I added context, because it may have sounded like I was joking originally. It really is a really thing. boys used to be knave girls and girls used to be gay girls

vv 💫 [follow my new artist profile!]@vv@solarpunk.moe

did you know that boys used to be called "knave girls" and girls were called "gay girls"? English is such a fun language

Tom Forsyth@TomF@mastodon.gamedev.place

Replying to an earlier post

@cwebber Reminds me of "rabbit" which used to specifically refer to baby lagomorphs - the equivalent of "puppy" and "kitten". The name for an adult was "coney", and it rhymed with "money" and "honey" as you'd expect.

The problem was that "coney" became slang for lady-parts, and so (a) they used "rabbit" instead and (b) they changed the pronunciation to cone-ey.

Fortunately English responded to having "coney" removed from common use by making "pussy" slang for lady parts instead. Indomitable!

Jul 4, 2026, 17:58 UTCen