colleen
noun
an Irish girl.
colleen
1 American
[kol-een, ko-leen]
/ ˈkɒl in, kɒˈlin /
noun
Colleen
2
American
[kol-een, ko-leen]
/ ˈkɒl in, kɒˈlin /
noun
colleen
British
/ kɒˈliːn, ˈkɒliːn /
noun
-
an Irish word for girl
-
an Irish girl
Etymology
Origin of colleen
1820–30; < Irish cailín, equivalent to caile girl, wench + -ín diminutive suffix
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Wilmington described O’Hara as “Hollywood’s ultimate fiery colleen, she has a classic chiseled Irish beauty and a thinly strapped temper that erupted smashingly into scathing tantrums or round-house rights.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 24, 2015
And the neighbours all pity the colleen so pretty,
From BBC ● Apr. 2, 2015
The Hitch The inhabitants of a neighboring barren, windswept Irish island want parts in it, including the play’s misshapen title character and a sociopathic colleen named Slippy Helen.
From New York Times ● Oct. 18, 2014
Last week there was a coy smile on the face of New York's Tammany tiger for on its back sat a fair colleen named Winifred C. O'Leary.
From Time Magazine Archive
And this colleen of mine, with her green cloak which she'd got from a theatrical costumier, represented a romantic ideal.
From Captain Macedoine's Daughter by William McFee
She made her first ever New Year's resolution, to read just one book, Colleen Hoover's It Ends With Us, which was released as a film starring Blake Lively in 2024.
From BBC ● Jul. 12, 2026
Colleen J. Shogan, the CEO of In Pursuit and senior adviser at More Perfect, was the 11th Archivist of the U.S. between 2023 and 2025.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 30, 2026
Career coach Colleen Paulson has heard from hundreds of professionals age 50 or older struggling to land a job over the past two years.
From MarketWatch ● Jun. 19, 2026
District Judge Colleen McMahon handed down a 143-page opinion explaining exactly how illegal that was.
From Slate ● May 14, 2026
Colleen is young, maybe in her thirties, and really nice.
From "P.S. I Miss You" by Jen Petro-Roy
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
