at one time, meant a female infant, and was the correlative of boy.
“Mercy on ’s! A barne, a very pretty barne. A boy or a child, I wonder?”—Shakespeare: Winter’s Tale, iii. 3.
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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.
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