boyfriend
Americannoun
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.
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
The film’s central romance and its twisty complications were dreamed up by the director and his co-writer Powell, an official Internet Boyfriend who makes a meal out of his character’s nerdy/hunky dichotomy.
From Los Angeles Times • Jun. 7, 2024
The rise of the Every Boyfriend is not without its blind spots and gaps.
From Salon • May 11, 2024
She singles out two songs, Be My Own Boyfriend and The Hardest Part, as particularly crucial.
From BBC • Jan. 3, 2024
If you were Boyfriend and Girlfriend, you did not visit each other's homes; you registered for after-school lessons, for French Club, for anything that could mean seeing each other outside school.
From "Americanah" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
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.
