girlboss
girlboss noun: a female entrepreneur who succeeds in the male-dominated business world.
Noun
girlboss (plural girlbosses)
- A female entrepreneur who succeeds in the male-dominated business world.
- The book also includes sidebars featuring guest “girlbosses” (bloggers, Internet entrepreneurs) who share equally clichéd suggestions for business success.2014, review of #Girlboss by Sophia Amoruso, Kirkus Reviews, 15 July 2014, page 41
- The girlboss didn't change the system; she thrived within it. Now that system is cracking, and so is this icon of millennial hustle.2021, Leigh Stein, quoted in Arwa Mahdawi, Strong Female Lead: Lessons from Women in Power, unnumbered page
- Any strong-willed, independent, enterprising woman.
- But viewers stanned girlbosses in every genre, from Parks and Recreation's idealistic bureaucrat Leslie Knope to Game of Thrones' colonizer Khaleesi, Daenerys Targaryen.2021, Judy Berman, "What comes after the pop-culture girlboss", Time, 5 July 2021 - 12 July 2021, page 98
Verb
girlboss (third-person singular simple present girlbosses, present participle girlbossing, simple past and past participle girlbossed)
- To behave or act as a girlboss.
- The reality of girlbossing, however, was always a little bit messier. […] Girlbossing provided a tenuous bridge in the mid-2010s: on one end, the reality of social upheaval and stagnant wage growth that met young people in the job market after the Great Recession; on the other, the long-gone world...2020 June 25, Amanda Mull, “The Girlboss Has Left the Building”, in The Atlantic, archived from the original on 26 Mar 2021
- Did Taylor Swift "girl boss" too close to the sun? Some fans are now debating the ethics of making and having that much money.2023 January 23, Michelle Elias, “Taylor Swift is on the world tour that’s tipped to make her a billionaire. Fans are torn”, in SBS, archived from the original on 25 Apr 2023
Forms of girlboss
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | girlbosses |
| alternative form | girl boss |
| alternative form | girl-boss |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | girlbosses |
| present participle | girlbossing |
| past participle | girlbossed |
| past | girlbossed |
Origin of girlboss
From girl + boss, popularised by American businesswoman Sophia Amoruso in her 2014 book #Girlboss.
Words formed from girlboss
Questions about girlboss
- What does girlboss mean?
- Girlboss means a female entrepreneur who succeeds in the male-dominated business world.
- What part of speech is girlboss?
- Girlboss can be a noun or a verb.
- What is the plural of girlboss?
- The plural of girlboss is girlbosses.
Words near girlboss in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: girlboss (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-girlboss.wav.
Cite this entry: “girlboss.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/girlboss. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.