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:
Shortly before Nashville finished filming, she met a new boyfriend, Brian Hickerson.
From BBC ● Aug. 17, 2026
She wasn’t a huge fan of Trump, she said, but she had wanted to buy something for her boyfriend.
From Slate ● Aug. 14, 2026
Frankie invents a new nonsensical insult, calling Molly’s boyfriend Josh “such a customer.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 13, 2026
"I got some for me, my boyfriend and a couple of friends whose online order got cancelled!" he told AFP.
From Barron's ● Aug. 11, 2026
To not have a boyfriend until she went to college?
From "Found" 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
Meanwhile, a parallel trend has emerged of boyfriends documenting how the movie left them rattled.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 28, 2026
It includes dealing with new boyfriends of family members pretending to be who they aren’t.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 14, 2025
The boyfriends never lasted any longer than the jobs.
From "The Glass Castle" by Jeannette Walls
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.
