Boy

A boy is a young male human, usually child or adolescent. When he becomes an adult he's described as a man. The most apparent thing that differentiates a boy from a girl is that a boy typically has a penis while girls do not. However some intersex children with ambiguous genitals, and biologically female transgender children, may also be classified or self-identify as a "boy".

The term "boy" is primarily used to indicate biological sex distinctions, cultural gender role distinctions or both. The latter most commonly applies to adult men, either considered in some way immature or inferior, in a position associated with aspects of boyhood, or even without such boyish connotation as age-indiscriminate synonym. The term can be joined with a variety of other words to form these gender-related labels as compound words.

Famous quotes containing the word boy:

“Behind the steering wheel
The boy took out his own forehead.
His girlfriend’s head was a green bag
Of narcissus stems. “OK you win
But meet me anyway at Cohen’s Drug Store
In 22 minutes.””
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)

“Young children...are often uninterested in conversation It is not that they don’t have ideas and feelings, or need to express them to others It is simply that as one eight-year-old boy once told me, “Talking is okay, but I don’t like to do it all the time the way grown-ups do; I guess you have to develop the habit.””
—Robert Coles (20th century)

“The king said, -Divide the living boy in two; then give half to the one, and half to the other. But the woman whose son was alive said to the king -because compassion for her son burned within her - -Please, my lord, give her the living boy; certainly do not kill him! The other said, -It shall be neither mine nor yours; divide it. Then the king responded: -Give the first woman the living boy; do not kill him. She is his mother.”
—Bible: Hebrew, 1 Kings. 3:25-37.

Solomon resolves a dispute between two women over a child. Solomon’s wisdom was proven by this story.