girl

   1. a prostitute

   Literally, a female child or servant, whence a sweetheart. Often in more explicit phrases, such as girl of the streets:

    They turn the young Jewesses... into what are generically known as girls. (Londres, 1928, in translation)

    The veritable girl of the streets is too 'vicious', (ibid.)

   Girlie often indicates that the women involved are being exploited for, or engaged in, prostitution, as in girlie houses, parlors, etc., which are brothels, and girlie bars, where prostitutes solicit custom; or in pornography, where girlie flicks, magazines, or videos aim to titillate men:

    ... a front for the girlie house Billie ran upstairs. (Weverka, 1973)

    ... direct traffic up to Billie's girlie parlor. (ibid.)

   2. any female less than 50 years old

   The usage, often in the form of hyperbole, seeks to imply that the ageing process has been retarded or reversed:

    ... she was only a slip of a girl — what was she now — twenty-seven or eight. ( J. Collins, 1981)

    I first met Winston Churchill in the early summer of 1906 at a dinner party to which I went as a very young girl. (V. B. Carter, 1965 — she was not in swaddling clothes but a woman of 19)

   See also boy.

   3. American

   cocaine

   Addict usage, the etymology being explained in the quotation:

    Nobody called cocaine white lady any more, either. But the word girl had come to mean cocaine through a sort of perverse evolution. (McBain, 1994)