1. “Girl” was originally gender-neutral
- In Middle English (c. 1200s–1400s), girle/gerle/gurl/gurle meant a child or young person, with no reference to sex.
- If you wanted to specify, people actually said:
- knave-girl → male child
- gay-girl → female child
So girl was just “child,” period.
2. How it shifted
- By the late Middle English → Early Modern English period (1400s–1500s), girl narrowed in meaning from “child” → specifically “female child.”
- This is when English vocabulary for age/sex was reshuffling, and “boy” was rising in popularity (see below).
3. “Boy” in contrast
- In early use, boy wasn’t even neutral — it was a derogatory term for a servant or low-status person (male or female).
- Later, by around the 14th–15th century, it shifted toward meaning a male youth (usually post-puberty, but before full adulthood).
So originally:
- Boy = servant/low-born person → later “male youth.”
- Girl = child (any sex) → later “female child.”
4. Other words in the system
Since English was reshuffling:
- Maid/maiden = young unmarried woman (often after puberty).
- Young lady/damsel = also used for post-puberty females of some social status.
- Knave/lad = words that filled the male youth gap.
So you had a more layered vocabulary, and girl/boy weren’t the neat opposites we think of now.
5. Why did “girl” feminize?
Scholars think it’s because society needed a consistent pair of opposites (boy vs. girl) as boy stabilized into “male youth.” Since wifmann/woman was already occupied for adult women, girl got pushed into the “female child” role.