Other forms: girlfriends
A girlfriend is the woman or girl somebody is romantically involved with. His girlfriend, my girlfriend, they have been girlfriend and boyfriend since school.
It is one word and it is the ordinary term for an unmarried romantic partner of any age, which is why it sits oddly on people in their fifties — partner is the usual word once things are settled. In American English a woman's girlfriend is often simply a close female friend, with no romance implied at all, and that difference causes genuine confusion between the two dialects. Note ex-girlfriend, and that girlfriends in the plural nearly always means friends rather than partners.
1noungirlfriendThe woman or girl somebody is romantically involved with.~98%
“He brought his girlfriend to the wedding.”
2nounuseIn American use, a close female friend.~2%
“She was out with her girlfriends all evening.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 13 sentences found in the wild and placed 13 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
girlfriend is a romantic partner.
From girl + friend.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA