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:
Bale said people standing near her started to use her group as markers, with one asking her to stay in place while she went to the bathroom so she could find her boyfriend.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 22, 2026
He’s having a fraught phone conversation with his mother, who’s upset to learn that the reason his boyfriend can’t pick him up is that they’ve broken up.
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
“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
Her boyfriend, Liam, and her best friend, Amber, are working there, too —assisting the art and music teachers.
From "Keeping Pace" by Laurie Morrison
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
We actually found a social insight on TikTok, with people commenting that we need to enlist our boyfriends in boot camp, they’re bad gift givers, so on and so forth.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 5, 2026
I had boyfriends who were just my best mates.
From BBC ● Oct. 22, 2025
At least half of the girls working in the factory cannot read or write, so Jutta reads them the letters that come from boyfriends or brothers or fathers at the front.
From "All the Light We Cannot See" by Anthony Doerr
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.
