colleen
UK /kəˈliːn/ · US /kəˈlin/ noun, proper noun
Forms colleens coleen
- noun (Ireland) A girl.
- noun (Ireland) A young single woman.
- proper noun A female given name from English or Irish.
Etymology
Borrowed from Irish cailín.
From the word colleen, from Irish cailín (“girl”), not used as a name in Ireland. Colleen can also be interpreted as a variant of Coleen, which was a product of marketing by the Hollywood film industry (to promote a new starlet in the 1920s).
Webster’s 1913
Sources: Wiktionary · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “colleen”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details