Boy
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- For other uses, see Boy (disambiguation).
A boy is a male human child, as contrasted to a female child, which is a girl. The term "boy" is used to indicate biological sex distinctions, cultural gender role distinctions, or both. An adult male human is a man. The boundary is not clear cut and in many contexts terms such as "youth" of teenager are used for an intermediate stage. A man may be referred to colloquially as a "boy" in certain contexts; for example, the word is commonly used when discussing adult males in relationships, such as in the word boyfriend. A young man who has not assumed the traditional roles of a man might also be called a boy.
In the U.S. the word is sometimes used disparagingly for a black man or (historically) for a male slave. It was also widely applied to black men in South Africa in the Apartheid era, and (mainly historically) to black men in many other contexts. In the UK football managers quite often refer to footballers as "The boy so-and-so" and this usage is by no means restricted to the youngest players, though it is rarely applied to the most senior.
See also
External link
- Historical Boys' Clothing (http://members.tripod.com/~histclo/)