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.
Read more about Boy: Etymology, Overview, Specific Uses and Compounds, Non-function Specific Analogous Terms, Analogous Uses and Popular Etymology, Boys in Art, Gallery
Famous quotes containing the word boy:
“While yet a boy I sought for ghosts, and sped
Through many a listening chamber, cave and ruin,
And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing
Hopes of high talk with the departed dead.”
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)
“Every boy was supposed to come into the world equipped with a father whose prime function was to be our father and show us how to be men. He can escape us, but we can never escape him. Present or absent, dead or alive, real or imagined, our father is the main man in our masculinity.”
—Frank Pittman (20th century)
“Am I not father, too, and the ascending boy,
The boy of woman and the wanton starer
Marking the flesh and summer in the bay?”
—Dylan Thomas (1914–1953)