Thread: charity-girl

What's that?
Dictionary says - "добрая" девушка. I don't know what they meant puting "добрая"in in inverted commas, but it sounds suspicious and made me curious.

Google just turns up a bunch of hits on books with that title. I really have no idea, it could mean any number of things -- you'd really have to know the book and its character to know the meaning...

Originally Posted by gRomoZeka

What's that?
Dictionary says - "добрая" девушка. I don't know what they meant puting "добрая"in in inverted commas, but it sounds suspicious and made me curious.

Ну это в смысле не толстая, а жалостливая

"Добрая"? Хм . I think this definition referes to the slang meaning of that phrase. It means "легко доступная (в сексульном плане)". Мол, всем даёт, никому не отказывает.

However, depending on the context, it can make half a dozen different things.

An orphan girl whose education is paid for by a charity organization can be referred to by the school staff as "that charity girl". A female employee of a charity org or a charity liason of a church can also be sometimes informally called "our charity girl" (note: today, that would be considered extremely un-PC). Etc.

Может быть это девушка, собирающая пожертвования?

Originally Posted by Ramil

Может быть это девушка, собирающая пожертвования?

И это тоже. Всё зависит от контекста.

Originally Posted by translations.nm.ru

Originally Posted by Ramil

Может быть это девушка, собирающая пожертвования?

И это тоже. Всё зависит от контекста.

There were no context. I came across that word in the dictionary:
charity-girl - амер., сл. "добрая" девушка

But then I found that:
charity-girl - табу., сл. распутная молодая женщина,
so translations.nm.ru was right.

"Добрая" is strange and confusing euphemism for that. I think, dictionaries must be more definite.

Thanks to all who answered.

A whore, I reckon...

Hold on... Promt gives it as "воспитанница приюта"... so, it all depends on the context.

Originally Posted by gRomoZeka

"Добрая" is strange and confusing euphemism for that. I think, dictionaries must be more definite.

That's the problem with bilingual dictionaries. Very often, they provide possible translations of a word or phrase instead of defining it. That is why I always recommend to switch to mono-lingual dictionaries ("толковые словари") as soon as you have built up sufficient vocabulary to understand definitions.

Reading definitions written by native speakers gives you a whole new insight into a language, not to mention that monolingual dictionaries are usually more up-to-date. By the way, a little research has shown that people called promiscious women "charity girls" back in 1920s or so.