(a.) Like, or characteristic of, a girl; of or pertaining to girlhood; innocent; artless; immature; weak; as, girlish ways; girlish grief.
Example Sentences:
(1) When I tell her of course it is, she looks girlishly relieved, like a fifth former who's been let off homework.
(2) Northanger Abbey is a jeu d'esprit, in which vivid girlish affection is turned to something deeper by a teasing lover, Henry Tilney.
(3) He could throw the ball further than anyone his father had seen, but was mildly frustrated when his sister, Victoria, 23, did not share his passion – teasingly calling her "feeble Phoebie" for her girlish attempts to do the same.
(4) She is physically charismatic, and has a way at 50 of seeming both maternal and girlish - a fast-talking New Yorker, yet yoga-calm.
(5) Throughout my 20s, my daily style could be described as “cute girlish dress, ideally with a collar, black tights, whatever the weather”.
(6) Liking the Mitfords, I realised, was seen as something girlish, shallow and immature, like having an over-developed fondness for ponies, or wanting to be a ballerina.
(7) Changeability, I think, is seen as girlish, or something, which is ridiculous.
(8) That pink, glittery girlishness also defines the "reality" show, The Girls of the Playboy Mansion, which started in 2005 and ran for six series, providing a sanitised look at life for Hefner's many girlfriends.
(9) Each model had her hair brushed smoothly into a girlish half-ponytail, secured with a simple gold hoop clip – a detail that recurred on the fastenings of the handbags, which were more structured versions of the bucket-shaped bags popular on the front row.
(10) What gives the thing its horror, queerly enough, is the girlishness.
(11) Set up as a giant chess game, it showcased a wide range of ideas, from girlish Edwardian tailored sailor jackets to 18th-century flower-embroidered jackets over candy-striped puffball skirts.
(12) A sudden release, into girlish, almost giddy fandom.
(13) She is nearly 50, but there is something girlish about her still – the angular kind of girl who will run through fields barefoot, who thinks nothing of getting her hands dirty (Lucas's fingers are stubby, workman-like); a grownup, slightly more masculine version of Sissy Spacek in Terrence Malick's Badlands.
(14) He was no intellectual but he discovered in the great roles some element others had not detected: his Macbeth revealed the character's dark irony, his Coriolanus uncovered a faintly girlish shyness inside the military hero and, as Astrov in Uncle Vanya, Olivier found a sexual vanity that led him to check his appearance in the mirror before explaining deforestation to the captivating Elena.
(15) After last season's short, pastel, girlish collection this was a radical turnaround for Kane, but his is a customer with a real love of fashion.
(16) He wrote to Gertrude Thomson, an artist who was sketching girlish fairies and nymphs, "I confess I do not admire naked boys in pictures.
(17) Girlishness is a national obsession – Japan did not ban possession of child pornography until 2014 – and its most popular female icon, Hello Kitty, doesn’t have a mouth.
(18) Listening to his hesitant speaking voice, and looking at that slight, fragile body, the beautiful clothes, the girlish bone structure, you’d imagine him having a singing voice as light as chiffon, a mere wisp of a thing.
(19) Its door release mechanism being somewhat temperamental, when I ring her bell one dank morning in May, she must skip downstairs to greet me – something she does barefoot, the skirt of her primrose broderie anglaise dress gathered girlishly in her hands.
(20) Contrary to his imposing, weather-beaten appearance, he delivers songs in keening, vulnerable, almost girlish tones: listening to him, you instantly hear that quintessentially American quality known as 'The High Lonesome'.
Womanish
Definition:
(a.) Suitable to a woman, having the qualities of a woman; effeminate; not becoming a man; -- usually in a reproachful sense. See the Note under Effeminate.
Example Sentences:
(1) *** When I left junior high, I had what I thought seemed like a reasonably womanish body and improving makeup skills.
(2) We need a new word for laddishness, for this is womanishness nowadays.