"big girl's blouse" meaning in English

See big girl's blouse in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Forms: big girl's blouses [plural], big girls' blouses [plural]
Etymology: First recorded (1969) in the television sitcom Nearest and Dearest, used by the character Nellie Pledge (played by comedienne Hylda Baker). It has been suggested that Baker had previously used this expression in her stage act. Head templates: {{en-noun|s|big girls' blouses}} big girl's blouse (plural big girl's blouses or big girls' blouses)
  1. (informal, British, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, derogatory) An effeminate or weak man, a sissy. Wikipedia link: Hylda Baker, Nearest and Dearest Tags: Australia, British, Ireland, New-Zealand, derogatory, informal Synonyms: nancyboy, pantywaist, pansy, wuss, milksop, effeminate man
    Sense id: en-big_girl's_blouse-en-noun-zeFmXGRN Categories (other): Australian English, British English, English entries with incorrect language header, Irish English, New Zealand English

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for big girl's blouse meaning in English (2.5kB)

{
  "etymology_text": "First recorded (1969) in the television sitcom Nearest and Dearest, used by the character Nellie Pledge (played by comedienne Hylda Baker). It has been suggested that Baker had previously used this expression in her stage act.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "big girl's blouses",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "big girls' blouses",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "s",
        "2": "big girls' blouses"
      },
      "expansion": "big girl's blouse (plural big girl's blouses or big girls' blouses)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Australian English",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "British English",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Irish English",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "New Zealand English",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2002 June, “Question to David Beckham”, in Marie Claire",
          "text": "You can see why people might think you’re a bit of a big girl’s blouse, because you have manicures, sunbeds and bleach your hair.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2013, Ian Botham, Beefy's Cricket Tales: My Favourite Stories from On and Off the Field, Simon and Schuster, page 134",
          "text": "The reason for this was not because I was a big girl's blouse – no matter what anyone else says – but because as a fast bowler the big toe on the landing foot, which was the right in my case, is always in a state of disrepair.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2019 September 4, Boris Johnson, Prime Minister's Questions, Response to Jeremy Corbyn (the Leader of the Opposition), House of Commons",
          "text": "Call an election, you great big girl's blouse.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "An effeminate or weak man, a sissy."
      ],
      "id": "en-big_girl's_blouse-en-noun-zeFmXGRN",
      "links": [
        [
          "derogatory",
          "derogatory"
        ],
        [
          "effeminate",
          "effeminate"
        ],
        [
          "weak",
          "weak"
        ],
        [
          "sissy",
          "sissy"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(informal, British, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, derogatory) An effeminate or weak man, a sissy."
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "nancyboy"
        },
        {
          "word": "pantywaist"
        },
        {
          "word": "pansy"
        },
        {
          "word": "wuss"
        },
        {
          "word": "milksop"
        },
        {
          "word": "effeminate man"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "Australia",
        "British",
        "Ireland",
        "New-Zealand",
        "derogatory",
        "informal"
      ],
      "wikipedia": [
        "Hylda Baker",
        "Nearest and Dearest"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "big girl's blouse"
}
{
  "etymology_text": "First recorded (1969) in the television sitcom Nearest and Dearest, used by the character Nellie Pledge (played by comedienne Hylda Baker). It has been suggested that Baker had previously used this expression in her stage act.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "big girl's blouses",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "big girls' blouses",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "s",
        "2": "big girls' blouses"
      },
      "expansion": "big girl's blouse (plural big girl's blouses or big girls' blouses)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "Australian English",
        "British English",
        "English countable nouns",
        "English derogatory terms",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English informal terms",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English nouns",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "Irish English",
        "New Zealand English",
        "Quotation templates to be cleaned"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2002 June, “Question to David Beckham”, in Marie Claire",
          "text": "You can see why people might think you’re a bit of a big girl’s blouse, because you have manicures, sunbeds and bleach your hair.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2013, Ian Botham, Beefy's Cricket Tales: My Favourite Stories from On and Off the Field, Simon and Schuster, page 134",
          "text": "The reason for this was not because I was a big girl's blouse – no matter what anyone else says – but because as a fast bowler the big toe on the landing foot, which was the right in my case, is always in a state of disrepair.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2019 September 4, Boris Johnson, Prime Minister's Questions, Response to Jeremy Corbyn (the Leader of the Opposition), House of Commons",
          "text": "Call an election, you great big girl's blouse.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "An effeminate or weak man, a sissy."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "derogatory",
          "derogatory"
        ],
        [
          "effeminate",
          "effeminate"
        ],
        [
          "weak",
          "weak"
        ],
        [
          "sissy",
          "sissy"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(informal, British, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, derogatory) An effeminate or weak man, a sissy."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "Australia",
        "British",
        "Ireland",
        "New-Zealand",
        "derogatory",
        "informal"
      ],
      "wikipedia": [
        "Hylda Baker",
        "Nearest and Dearest"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "synonyms": [
    {
      "word": "nancyboy"
    },
    {
      "word": "pantywaist"
    },
    {
      "word": "pansy"
    },
    {
      "word": "wuss"
    },
    {
      "word": "milksop"
    },
    {
      "word": "effeminate man"
    }
  ],
  "word": "big girl's blouse"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-05 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.