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.
Richard Rubenstein said,
November 16, 2025 @ 5:56 pm
I can see no downside to following the "latino-latina" model and going with "bra".
KevinM said,
November 16, 2025 @ 6:02 pm
@Richard Rubenstein. Life goes on, bra. McCartney said he adopted it from a Nigerian conga player who used the term in lieu of bro.
A. Rappoport said,
November 16, 2025 @ 6:34 pm
Dude and guy are often used generically but convey that the male experience is the real one and shade into misogyny
Gregory Kusnick said,
November 16, 2025 @ 6:47 pm
No downside? You haven't reckoned with "brx".
rct said,
November 16, 2025 @ 7:17 pm
"Brah" already exists as a "bro" equivalent (not a feminine version). I've heard this variant in California for 15-20 years. It was also in the name of the character Father Brah on the sitcom Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, which ran from 2015-2019.
JPL said,
November 16, 2025 @ 7:53 pm
The Nigerian conga player no doubt was a speaker of Nigerian Pidgin, where "bra" is indeed a term evoking the kinship relation (along with "pa", "mama", "sisi", etc.), and can be used vocatively, but I wouldn't say it is being used "in lieu of" "bro". The connotations are different; "bra" indicates a more positive familial solidarity than "bro" often has, like when it's used as an alternative to "dude". BTW, "Bre'r Rabbit" would be pronounced "bra rabbit" by speakers of West African-English creoles. So no "feminine ending" is involved here. The above kinship expressions can all be used vocatively, if that's the right term, so "sisi" is a respectful term used to address a woman who is perhaps not yet middle-aged.