Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To romp rudely.
  • noun A rude, bold man.
  • noun A rude, bold girl; a romp.
  • Rude; bold; inelegant; rustic.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun obsolete A rude, clownish youth.
  • noun A rude, bold girl; a romp.
  • adjective Rustic; rude; bold.
  • intransitive verb To romp rudely or indecently.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun Alternative form of hoyden.
  • verb To romp rudely or indecently.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • 'She rides to please her horse now, but she'll have him as quiet as yours before long,' rejoined her son, both a little angry and a little amused at her being called a hoiden who was to him like an angel grown young with aeonian life.

    Heather and Snow George MacDonald 1864

  • Elfride saw her father then, and went away into the wind, being caught by a gust as she ascended the churchyard slope, in which gust she had the motions, without the motives, of a hoiden; the grace, without the self-consciousness, of a pirouetter.

    A Pair of Blue Eyes 2006

  • A light-hearted, sportive girl, with an incontinent overflow of spirits, is condemned as a hoiden.

    Lessons in Life A Series of Familiar Essays Timothy Titcomb

  • May was a promising girl, "almost a hoiden," the neighbors said.

    Our Nervous Friends — Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness Robert S. Carroll

  • Again and again, to the brass blare of some hoiden tune, she set the words of the lyric that "she liked the feel of," and she danced on and on.

    Friendship Village Zona Gale 1906

  • Once before, years ago, she had behaved with the same piteous docility; and that was when, a short-frocked hoiden, she had fallen from an apple tree and badly hurt herself, and Marigold had carried her into the house and Mrs. Marigold had put her to bed. ...

    The Red Planet William John Locke 1896

  • Miss Noltrieb was a bright, pretty girl, a few months the senior of my young mistress, full of hoiden spirits with a soupcon of something more charmingly piquant.

    The Story of a Slave. A Realistic Revelation of a Social Relation of Slave Times--Hitherto Unwritten--From the Pen of One Who Has Felt Both the Lash and the Caress of a Mistress No Author 1894

  • Elfride saw her father then, and went away into the wind, being caught by a gust as she ascended the churchyard slope, in which gust she had the motions, without the motives, of a hoiden; the grace, without the self-consciousness, of a pirouetter.

    A Pair of Blue Eyes Thomas Hardy 1884

  • Talking never mended matters; Jack was at the hoiden age, and had to grow into tidiness and womanhood by-and-by.

    Esther : a book for girls Rosa Nouchette Carey 1874

  • She was a madcap and a hoiden -- a wild, hare-brained, fox-hunting Amazon -- all that was shocking and unwomanly, but, at the same time, all that was bright, beautiful, entrancing, irresistible.

    The Baronet's Bride May Agnes Fleming 1860

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