Russian · words English knows
What does devushka mean?
девушка Say it DYEvushka noun, feminine
Devushka means young woman in Russian, and it is also the polite way to address one you do not know, from a waitress to a stranger in the street.
Девушка means a young woman or girlfriend, and, startlingly for English speakers, it is the standard polite way to ADDRESS a young woman you do not know: waitresses, shop assistants, someone who dropped a glove. Девушка! across a cafe is not rude; it is the system working.
Aurélien CuvelierAug 15, 2026 · Updated Sep 22, 2026What it really means
Three senses share the word: a young woman in general (unmarried-adult vintage), somebody's girlfriend (моя девушка, my girlfriend), and the vocative use that startles foreigners. Russian lost its old polite address words after 1917 (сударыня went out with the empire), and девушка filled the vacancy for younger women, with женщина for older ones.
The male counterpart is молодой человек (young man), used identically: to call a waiter, to hail a stranger, to scold someone pushing in line. Both are age-flexible in practice: a certain generation will девушка any woman under sixty, as flattery and habit at once.
The word as a word
A regular feminine noun in -а with the -шк- diminutive machinery already inside it (the root is дева, maiden). In the girlfriend sense the possessive matters: у меня есть девушка means I have a girlfriend, and у меня есть женщина says something rather different.
Watch out
Do not translate the address into English habits: calling девушка across a room is polite Russian, but calling miss! in the same tone in English is not, and vice versa importing excuse me, ma'am into Russian sounds bureaucratic. Each language's summons is its own idiom.
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Common questions
Is it rude to call a waitress devushka?
No, it is the standard polite summons: девушка is what filled the gap when pre-revolutionary address words died out. The male equivalent is молодой человек. Neither carries the condescension that girl! or young man! can carry in English.
Does devushka mean girlfriend?
In the possessive it does: моя девушка is my girlfriend, exactly as my girl once worked in English. Without the possessive it is simply a young woman, or the polite way to address one.
Written by
Aurélien Cuvelier Founder, NuanceDeck
Aurélien Cuvelier builds NuanceDeck, the app that teaches Russian and French words in context. Each course follows the official proficiency word lists and a frequency corpus for its language, and every word comes with real, annotated example sentences.
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