This week's lingo: "Girlfriend."
I understand that girlfriend usually is the term to describe a girl who is in a relationship, she's someone's girlfriend. However, I also see the word as important when describing a group of girls who are friends, they are girlfriends. There are a number of circumstances when the term girlfriend can easily flow in a conversation that everyone may not be aware of.
Example: You are in the busy dining hall of a huge university during lunch with some of your friends. In addition to eating and catching up, you love to people watch because you go to a pretty wild school with all kinds of interesting people. One girl in particular is wearing the wildest outfit you have ever seen and chooses to communicate via yelling and making eccentric monkey noises rather than speaking at an acceptable volume with those at her table. Annoyed, you lean to your friends and say, "Girlfriend needs to quiet down."
Why it works: Using the word girlfriend in this circumstance is useful because clearly your friend will understand who you are talking about based on the rest of your exclamation but you are also keeping her anonymous by not coming up with some ridiculous, rude way to describe her. Girlfriend is a term of endearment and from what I have learned about correcting someone's behavior is that it is always nice to compliment them first.
Example: You are at a friend's house with one of your female friends that has never met the hosting friend. The three of you are chattin it up, conversing about your lives, and getting to know each other. You have an interesting fact to share with your hosting friend about your other friend, and since you have already referred to her as her name and her multiple times, you switch it up by saying, "Girlfriend has three dogs and a cat."
Why it works: You have already used your friend's name and her multiple times so it's a good use of diction to switch it up by adding new words to the conversation. No one enjoys an unintelligent person who repeats the same word over and over when there are tons of appropriate synonyms. So vary your diction by inserting the word girlfriend every once in a while.
