Lolita
/lə(ʊ)ˈliːtə
/noun
A sexually precocious young girl.If her girls have been compared to prepubescent Lolitas, her seniors seem just as coy, if comically spry....
- In a little table in the corner, some very doll-like Lolitas were sitting and chatting on their cell phones.
- It is true that teenage mags can be vile little publications hellbent on creating a generation of Lolitas, dressed up in sparkly halter-neck frocks and the latest eyeshadow.
Origin
From the name of a character in the novel Lolita (1958) by Vladimir Nabokov.
In Vladimir Nabokov's novel Lolita (1958), Humbert Humbert, a man in his late 30s, becomes sexually obsessed with Dolores Haze, a 12-year-old girl whom he dubs Lolita, a pet form of Dolores. The book's disturbing subject matter created a scandal when it was published in the USA, but it gave the world two words for ‘a sexually precocious young girl’, Lolita itself and nymphet.