BOY • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Boy

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/bɔɪ/ Listen

noun

Boy n.

1.

A male child, from birth to the age of puberty; a lad; hence, a son. "My only boy fell by the side of great Dundee." Note: Boy is often used as a term of comradeship, as in college, or in the army or navy. In the plural used colloquially of members of an associaton, fraternity, or party.

2.

In various countries, a male servant, laborer, or slave of a native or inferior race; also, any man of such a race; considered derogatory by those so called, and now seldom used. (derog.) "He reverted again and again to the labor difficulty, and spoke of importing boys from Capetown."

Boy bishop, a boy (usually a chorister) elected bishop, in old Christian sports, and invested with robes and other insignia. He practiced a kind of mimicry of the ceremonies in which the bishop usually officiated.

The Old Boy, the Devil. (Slang)

Yellow boys, guineas. (Slang, Eng.)

Boy's love, a popular English name of Southernwood (Artemisia abrotonum); called also lad's love.

Boy's play, childish amusements; anything trifling.

verb

Boy v. t. To act as a boy; in allusion to the former practice of boys acting women's parts on the stage. "I shall see Some squeaking Cleopatra boy my greatness."

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Etymology of 'Boy'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Boy" Quotes from Famous Books

... as a mark of old-fogyism, if not as an evidence of the absence of "spiritual religion!" The new measures and methods of modern revivals are more acceptable to the fickle multitude. They seem to point out a shorter route and quicker time to heaven. As a boy once said to the writer: "I don't want to belong to your church, because I would have to study the Catechism all winter, and down at the other church I can 'get through' in one night." That boy expressed about as clearly and tersely ...

— The Way of Salvation in the Lutheran Church • G. H. Gerberding

... "Call me father, my boy. She does," said the mollified old adventurer. "Damme, though, if I didn't think you were going to refuse. Mind you, Kaspar, I always get my way, so it would have been no use. But ...

— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad

... but after a time the numbers decreased, and at the dissolution there were only twenty-six. The injunctions of 1311 were very strict, some of them deal with the locking of doors, forbid the presence of children, whether boy or girl, in the ...

— Bell's Cathedrals: A Short Account of Romsey Abbey • Thomas Perkins

... boy who receives a good education and is trained to be a self-respecting member of the body politic might in time share on equal terms the chance of the poor boy to become a man of genuine influence and importance on his own account, just as now by the neglect, or worse, of his ...

— Civics and Health • William H. Allen

... higher education; I simply maintain that the sort of education the colored people of the South stand most in need of is elementary and industrial. They should be instructed for the work to be done. Many a colored farmer boy or mechanic has been spoiled to make a foppish gambler or loafer, a swaggering pedagogue or a cranky homiletician. Men may be spoiled by education, even as they are spoiled by illiteracy. Education is the preparation ...

— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune

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