A ballerina is a woman who dances ballet — the stage dance with pointed shoes, turns, and long, clean lines of the body. In a dance company she may have a rank, and the lead woman is sometimes called the prima ballerina. In ordinary talk, though, people also call a girl a ballerina if she goes to ballet class, even if she has never danced on a big stage. The word is almost always for a woman or a girl. A man who does the same work is a ballet dancer. It is not rude or jokey by itself. People do use it lightly: a small child in a tutu at a school show gets called a little ballerina, with warmth. English borrowed it from Italian, where it already meant a female dancer. It belongs with ballet, not with basketball, even though baller sits next to it on the page.