Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun An Irish girl.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A girl.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun Anglo-Irish A girl; a maiden.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun girl
  • noun young single woman

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun an Irish girl

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Irish Gaelic cailín, diminutive of caile, girl, from Old Irish.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Borrowed from Irish cailín.

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Examples

Comments

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  • "The colleen bawn, my colleen bawn. O, cheese it!"

    Joyce, Ulysses, 14

    January 27, 2007

  • from the Irish word "cailin", meaning a girl.

    February 19, 2007

  • That quote is also the origination of the cracker Cheese-It.

    February 19, 2007

  • Regional American pronunciation is sometimes long O (midwest mostly) but correctly pronounced C"ah"leen.

    June 9, 2009