Girlsemanticsatiation
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Yesterday's Dinosaur Comics:
Ryan arguably pushes past the bounds of good taste in the mouseover title: "girl we have some bad news on your girlsecondarycancerlabreport. i'm afraid i have some bad news for some very specific cancer girlies". But maybe that's the point?
There are certainly earlier models for the girl-NOUN (and boy-NOUN) pattern, e.g. girlfriend and boyfriend, though it's not clear why those patterns weren't used more widely. It was commoner to see girl and boy as compound heads rather than first-element modifiers: batboy, ballboy, bellboy, busboy, cowboy, fanboy, flyboy, newsboy, playboy, ?salesboy, schoolboy, ?*showboy, etc.; batgirl, ballgirl, ?bellgirl, ?busgirl, cowgirl, fangirl, flygirl, newsgirl, playgirl, salesgirl, schoolgirl, showgirl, etc.
Just as there's an opening for more boy-NOUN coinages, the culture also obviously needs a female-gendered version of bro, in uses analogous to those featured in these panels from today's Doonesbury:
You could try "MODIFIER girls", but "MAGA girls" and "tech girls" and so on don't have the same vibe.
I've also recently been interested to hear young women sometimes using bro as a vocative tag in talking among themselves, e.g. "Why not, bro?" Among young men, such tags are now locally ubiquitous, largely replacing man. The vocative tag girl is also possible, but again, it has a different vibe.
Update — as a vocative tag, bro seems neutral or even positive among the people who use it; but the head noun is often disparaging or derogatory, as in the cited cartoon.
wgj said,
November 16, 2025 @ 7:25 am
Surely the equivalent to "bro" isn't "girl" but "ho"?
Jerry Packard said,
November 16, 2025 @ 7:43 am
And the girl prefix can be further inflected: girl > girly; boss > girlboss > girly boss
Mark Liberman said,
November 16, 2025 @ 7:47 am
@wgj: "Surely the equivalent to "bro" isn't "girl" but "ho"?":
Absolutely not. Even if that comment is a joke, it's offensive.
"Tech hoes"? I don't think so.
Mark Liberman said,
November 16, 2025 @ 7:49 am
@Jerry Packard: "And the girl prefix can be further inflected: girl > girly; boss > girlboss > girly boss":
You don't get it: A "girlboss" is the opposite of a "girly boss"…
Stephen Goranson said,
November 16, 2025 @ 8:21 am
Attagirl seems older than you go, girl.
bro, meet gal?
Anubis Bard said,
November 16, 2025 @ 8:41 am
The closest female analog to Trudeau's use of "bro" is probably "Karen," covering the angry and entitled turf. Though bros don't HAVE to be angry and Karens do.
Gregory Kusnick said,
November 16, 2025 @ 12:34 pm
I honestly don't get the "Karen" thing. Whatever negative stereotype it's meant to convey, it should be obvious that a great many people actually named Karen don't deserve to be insulted in that way and could justifiably take offense at that usage. It seems like that ought to matter, but apparently it doesn't.
MattF said,
November 16, 2025 @ 1:32 pm
And how about girlgirl? Would this be a case of reduplicative nominalization? To coin an unfortunate term…
Nhan Hong said,
November 16, 2025 @ 2:30 pm
What about sis as opposite sex to bro?
J.W. Brewer said,
November 16, 2025 @ 2:55 pm
Our 11-year-old son has intermittently taken to using vocative "bro" in direct address to my wife, which she does not seem to find an entirely satisfactory innovation, even though she herself was an early adopter of vocative "dude" for addressing other women. If "dude" can become epicene in that context, there's no inherent reason "bro" can't, so stay tuned.
Stephen Goranson said,
November 16, 2025 @ 3:09 pm
Though no exact equivalent is somehow required, good observation on sis, Nhan Hong.
Jonathan Smith said,
November 16, 2025 @ 3:55 pm
Was going to say female version is "dude" but J.W. Brewer beat me — and problem with "Karen" is it's gendered, which also seems to go unnoted… general skunking of names for various reasons happens all the time.