boy
boys
A boy is a male child. When a baby is born, the doctor or midwife often says, "It's a girl!" or "It's a boy!"
A boy usually grows up to be a man, just as a girl most often becomes a woman. A delivery boy is a young man whose job involves taking pizzas to people's homes, and you might call to your dog, "Here, boy!" unless your dog is female. Boy is also an exclamation: "Oh boy! I can't wait for my vacation next week!" The Old English root is boie, "boy," but also "servant" or "commoner."
Definitions of boy
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a youthful male person“the baby was a boy”“she made the boy brush his teeth every night”
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synonyms:
male child
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Antonyms:
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female child, girl, little girl
a youthful female person
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types:
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altar boy
a boy serving as an acolyte
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ball boy
a boy who retrieves balls for tennis players
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bat boy
(baseball) a boy who takes care of bats and other baseball equipment
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cub, lad, laddie, sonny, sonny boy
a male child (a familiar term of address to a boy)
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catamite
a boy who submits to a sexual relationship with a man
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farm boy
a boy who has grown up on a farm
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Fauntleroy, Little Lord Fauntleroy
an excessively polite and well-dressed boy
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ploughboy, plowboy
a boy who leads the animals that draw a plow
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schoolboy
a boy attending school
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Scout
a Boy Scout or Girl Scout
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shop boy
a young male shop assistant
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Boy Scout
a boy who is a member of the Boy Scouts
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Girl Scout
a girl who is a member of the Girl Scouts
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type of:
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male, male person
a person who belongs to the sex that cannot have babies
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female child, girl, little girl
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a male human offspring“his boy is taller than he is”
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synonyms:
son
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examples:
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Esau
(Old Testament) the eldest son of Isaac who would have inherited the covenant that God made with Abraham and that Abraham passed on to Isaac; he traded his birthright to his twin brother Jacob for a mess of pottage
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types:
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Jnr, Jr, Junior
a son who has the same first name as his father
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mama's boy, mamma's boy, mother's boy
a boy excessively attached to his mother; lacking normal masculine interests
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type of:
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male offspring, man-child
a child who is male
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Esau
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a friendly informal reference to a grown man“he likes to play golf with the boys”
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types:
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broth of a boy, broth of a man
an outstanding person; as if produced by boiling down a savory broth
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one of the boys
a man who has been socially accepted into a group of other men
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type of:
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adult male, man
an adult person who is male (as opposed to a woman)
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broth of a boy, broth of a man
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(ethnic slur) offensive and disparaging term for Black man“get out of my way, boy”
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type of:
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Black man
a man who is Black
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Black man
DISCLAIMER: These example sentences appear in various news sources and books to reflect the usage of the word ‘boy'.
Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Vocabulary.com or its editors.
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