gamine
/ɡaˈmiːn
/noun
1A girl with a mischievous, boyish charm.The missing link between Burroughs and Ginsberg on the one hand and Dylan and Richards on the other, she was a working-class Catholic girl from New Jersey and a possessed gamine whose performances verged on the shamanistic....
- The bel canto opera repertoire is most closely associated with Bellini's deranged heroines and Donizetti's game gamines.
- Amelie herself is along the lines of the beloved gamine; comparisons with Audrey Hepburn abound in the film's press.
2 dated A female street urchin: I left school and fell in with some gamines...
- What he's sent is Diane, a street gamine two jumps ahead of the gendarmes.
adjective
(Of a girl) attractively boyish: a short, gamine haircut...
- Others preferred the gamine look with a short boyish haircut.
- With supple and beautifully proportioned body, short gamine haircut that emphasizes her lovely features and luscious long legs that swoop effortlessly skyward, she magnetizes with every movement.
- She isn't French, of course; she was the skinny, gamine English girl who seduced the bohemian hero of the Rive Gauche, and at first Gainsbourg's countrymen despised her.
Origin
Late 19th century: French, feminine of gamin (see gamin).