picara

American  

[pik-er-uh, pee-kuh-] / ˈpɪk ər ə, ˈpi kə- /

noun

1. a woman who is a rogue or vagabond.

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Etymology

Origin of picara

1925–30; < Spanish; feminine of picaro

Example Sentences

It strikes a blow for the picara by putting a heroine through the same paces that once animated a Tom Jones or a Holden Caulfield.

From Time Magazine Archive

And so it came about that in the enforced loneliness of her childhood she ransacked a library in which the "Picara Justina" of Fray Andrs Perez stood side-by-side with the Kalevala, a library in which works stupid as the Koran and dead as Coptic touched covers with the "Idyls of the King" and the fabliaux of medi�val France.

From Project Gutenberg

The ingenious licentiate, Francisco de Ubeda, when he commenced his history of La Picara Justina Diez,—which, by the way, is one of the most rare books of Spanish literature,—complained of his pen having caught up a hair, and forthwith begins, with more eloquence than common sense, an affectionate expostulation with that useful implement, upbraiding it with being the quill of a goose,—a bird inconstant by nature, as frequenting the three elements of water, earth, and air, indifferently, and being, of course, 'to one thing constant never.'

From Project Gutenberg