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.
David Puddy, Elaine’s on-and-off boyfriend in “Seinfeld,” famously attended a New Jersey Devils hockey game with a bright red “D” painted on his chest because you’ve “gotta support the team.”
From The Wall Street Journal • Jun. 21, 2026
Lucy and her boyfriend Sam Littler, who had been visiting her father and his family, were due to fly home later on the day of her death.
From BBC • Jun. 11, 2026
In court Wednesday, O’Brien said Rinderknecht knew the area well because he had lived there a few years earlier with his boyfriend, who had been renting a large house with a pool.
From Los Angeles Times • Jun. 10, 2026
Hall describes stumbling on the ChatGPT logs of her boyfriend of 5 months and finding that he had asked the LLM to decide, based on the concerns he input, whether he should continue their relationship.
From Salon • Jun. 10, 2026
I wonder how I’m going to break up with someone who’s not really my boyfriend.
From "A Good Kind of Trouble" by Lisa Moore Ramée
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.
