boyfriend
Americanadjective
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of boyfriend
Explanation
A boyfriend is a male romantic partner. Your cousin might ask if she can bring her boyfriend to the family Thanksgiving dinner this year. Usually, your boyfriend is a boy or man you're romantically involved with. Your aunt might join a dating site after breaking up with her boyfriend, and your ten year old neighbor might announce she has a boyfriend after a boy leaves a candy bar on her desk. The words boyfriend and girlfriend first appeared in the early 1900s, around the start of modern dating in the US.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Seconds after her aspirant boyfriend, Bear, snaps the One Wish Willow to make her fall in love with him, she walks back out of her house, a little sheepish and newly smitten.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 21, 2026
Recently, I went to a wedding where my boyfriend and I were the only people with corporate jobs.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 20, 2026
Sarah has spoken to her about overpaying on the mortgage and protecting herself financially now that her boyfriend has moved in.
From BBC ● Jul. 16, 2026
“But if I’m going to be a partner in a law firm by the time I’m 30, I need a boyfriend who’s not such a complete bonehead.”
From Salon ● Jul. 6, 2026
Chess thought about what Natalie had assumed about his mom—that she had a bad boyfriend, and that that was why she’d had to go away.
From "The Strangers" by Margaret Peterson Haddix
The phenomenon of artificial intelligence boyfriends and girlfriends is growing worldwide, along with the prevalence of human-like avatars that sell products or stand in for loved ones who have died.
From Barron's ● Jul. 15, 2026
The wedding, this theory goes, was payback for 20 years’ worth of media that characterized her as desperate and lovelorn and having only herself to blame for boyfriends who wilted under the media’s gaze.
From Salon ● Jul. 9, 2026
WSJLI: You guys did a really fun social campaign with Ziwe, where the comedian known for putting celebrities in the hot seat was running a “Bad Boyfriend Bootcamp” with culture’s notoriously bad boyfriends.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 5, 2026
I had boyfriends who were just my best mates.
From BBC ● Oct. 22, 2025
We’re lucky, because once again, there are no boyfriends tonight.
From "The Light in Hidden Places" by Sharon Cameron
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
