manic pixie dream girl
Syllables: man·ic pix·ie dream girl/ˈmænɪk ˌpɪksi ˈdɹiːm ɡɜːl/US/ˈmænɪk ˌpɪksi ˈdɹim ˌɡɝl/
manic pixie dream girl noun: a stock female character, typically characterized as a bubbly, quirky free spirit, whose main purpose within a narrative is to teach a young male protagonist to embrace the mysteries and adventures of life.
Noun
manic pixie dream girl (plural manic pixie dream girls)
- A stock female character, typically characterized as a bubbly, quirky free spirit, whose main purpose within a narrative is to teach a young male protagonist to embrace the mysteries and adventures of life.
- Then again, [Susan] Sarandon's character is the very embodiment of gritty neo-realism compared to Kirsten Dunst's stewardess/love interest. Dunst embodies a character type I like to call The Manic Pixie Dream Girl (see Natalie Portman in Garden State for another prime example). The Manic Pixie...2007 January 25, Nathan Rabin, “My Year Of Flops, Case File 1: Elizabethtown: The Bataan Death March of Whimsy”, in The A.V. Club Blog, archived from the original on 05 Feb 2007
- [page 218] For me, the Manic Pixie Dream Girl was the story that fit. Of course, I didn't think of it in those terms; all I saw was that in the books and series I loved – mainly science fiction, comics and offbeat literature, not the mainstream films that would later make the MPDG trope famous –...2014, Laurie Penny, “Love and Lies”, in Unspeakable Things: Sex, Lies and Revolution, New York, N.Y.; London: Bloomsbury, →ISBN, pages 218–219
Examples of manic pixie dream girl in a sentence
- Dunst embodies a character type I like to call The Manic Pixie Dream Girl (see Natalie Portman in Garden State for another prime example).2007 January 25, Nathan Rabin, “My Year Of Flops, Case File 1: Elizabethtown: The Bataan Death March of Whimsy”, in The A.V. Club Blog...
- [page 218] For me, the Manic Pixie Dream Girl was the story that fit.2014, Laurie Penny, “Love and Lies”, in Unspeakable Things: Sex, Lies and Revolution, New York, N.Y.; London: Bloomsbury, →ISBN, pages...
- We aren't the "career-focused ice queen" or the "sweet helpless damsel in distress" or the "manic pixie dream girl" [...].2016 April, Bethenny Frankel, Eve Adamson, “Woman, Know Thyself”, in I Suck at Relationships So You Don’t Have To: 10 Rules for Not...
- But even as Gina's behavior dips past manic pixie dream girl to merely manic, the director never deviates from the detached tone of his prologue.2017 September 17, Teo Bugbee, “Review: ‘Thirst Street’ hollows out Hollywood obsession”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New...
Forms of manic pixie dream girl
| plural | manic pixie dream girls |
|---|---|
| alternative form | manic pixie dreamgirl |
| alternative form | MPDG |
Origin of manic pixie dream girl
Coined by American film and music critic Nathan Rabin (born 1976) in a 2007 review of Elizabethtown (2005) to describe the character Claire Colburn played by Kirsten Dunst: see the quotation.
Questions about manic pixie dream girl
- What does manic pixie dream girl mean?
- Manic pixie dream girl means a stock female character, typically characterized as a bubbly, quirky free spirit, whose main purpose within a narrative is to teach a young male protagonist to embrace the mysteries and adventures of life.
- How do you use manic pixie dream girl in a sentence?
- Dunst embodies a character type I like to call The Manic Pixie Dream Girl (see Natalie Portman in Garden State for another prime example).
- What part of speech is manic pixie dream girl?
- Manic pixie dream girl is a noun.
- How do you pronounce manic pixie dream girl?
- Manic pixie dream girl is pronounced /ˈmænɪk ˌpɪksi ˈdɹiːm ɡɜːl/ (UK).
- What is the plural of manic pixie dream girl?
- The plural of manic pixie dream girl is manic pixie dream girls.
Words near manic pixie dream girl in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: manic pixie dream girl (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.
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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-manic pixie dream girl.wav.
Cite this entry: “manic pixie dream girl.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/manic_pixie_dream_girl. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.