Webster
✕

Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary · 1913

Boy

Boy (boi), n. [Cf. D. boef, Fries. boi, boy; akin to G. bube, Icel. bofi rouge.] 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. Sir W. Scott.

☞ 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.

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.

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. Shak.

Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Noah Porter, editor (Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913). Public domain. Text as transcribed by MICRA, Inc., from Project Gutenberg. Changed for Deep Dive Bible: Greek, which our source spelled in Latin letters, set in Greek letters; entries of one spelling merged into one article; Greek words our source left out (shown as “?”), read from the 1898 printing, from the same plates (the Library of Congress’s copy), where the place could be found with certainty. Of the others, 1,362 (a word or a single letter each) were inferred by AI from the context by the dictionary’s own rules and are marked with a wavy underline (tap or point at one to see the note); the rest, which could not be inferred with confidence, are left as “?”.