puella

Puella is a Latin noun meaning "girl" or "young woman." In Classical Latin and later forms of the language, it denotes a female child or adolescent and appears frequently in narratives, dialogues, and educational texts. The word is feminine and belongs to the first declension.

Declension and forms: Puella is declined as a first-declension noun. Singular: nominative puella, genitive puellae, dative puellae, accusative puellam, ablative puella. Plural: nominative puellae, genitive puellarum, dative puellis, accusative puellas, ablative puellis. The typical stress is on the first syllable, and the forms puellae can appear in both the nominative plural and the genitive singular, depending on grammatical context.

Usage notes: Puella is used to denote a girl in ordinary prose and poetry and is often encountered in Latin teaching to illustrate agreement and declension patterns. It contrasts with puer, the masculine counterpart meaning "boy." The term appears in a wide range of genres, from simple instructional sentences to more literary expressions.

Modern context: In English-language discussions of Latin, puella is cited as a standard example of a first-declension feminine noun. It also appears in modern writing and scholarship that engages with Latin-derived terms or names, though it remains primarily a historical linguistic term rather than a contemporary everyday word.