tomgirl

Noun

tomgirl (plural tomgirls)

1. A boy who behaves in a typically girlish manner.
   • This tactic didn't work, so several weeks later, in a variation on a theme, I reported to two girls on the playground "I'm a tomgirl," calculating that if tomboys exist, tomgirls must also, and I must be one. That didn't work either, […]1998, Claudine Griggs, S/He: Changing Sex and Changing Clothes, page 12
   • Delia says, “If you play with girls, then you are a tomgirl!”2003, a comment by a child, reported by William A. Corsaro in We are Friends, Right?

   Synonyms:

   janegirl

2. Synonym of tomboy (“girl who behaves in a typically boyish manner”).
   • Homosexual stirrings in children before puberty are very difficult to evaluate; most small boys with signs of effeminacy probably do not become homosexuals as adults and most tomgirls become heterosexual.1969, Harry Chapman, Sexual maneuvers and stratagems, page 121
   • To anybody else it's pretty silly: love. Why should I feel a loss? How am I bereft? She was never mine; she was a fiction, always a golden tomgirl, barefoot, with an adolescent's slouch and a boy's taste for sports and fishing, […]1998, Richard Ford, The Granta Book of the American Short Story, page 308

   Synonyms:

   tomboy