little son (often used as a familiar term of address to a boy).
(used as a term of direct address to express contempt, derision, etc.).
No, sonny, you can't park there!
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
It’s not like, ‘Hey get off my lawn, and baseball was better when I was a kid, sonny.’
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 26, 2018
“Come, sonny boy!” he heard her whisper, and with a smile he let go.
From The Guardian ● Nov. 17, 2016
We need to save Mako big Joe and big Sam for the vital last 25 mins. look at NZ today sonny Bill and Barrett won them the game.
From BBC ● Sep. 19, 2015
Sony was meant to appeal to Americans--a nod to "sonny boy," which was a phrase that was popular in Japan during the 1950s.
From Inc ● Mar. 24, 2010
“Don’t you hurry me, sonny, you hurry a miracle man, you get rotten miracles, that what you want?”
From "The Princess Bride" by William Goldman
“We weren’t a good team, and that was a fact,” ace pitcher Sonny Gray said this weekend.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 21, 2026
And Sonny eventually integrates with a few of her fellow resort-goers, and learns there’s more to them in reality than her imaginings.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 14, 2026
Sonny wants to reassure everybody that she was just making it up.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 14, 2026
Cleon Roberts, co-founder of The Harlesden Walk of Music and Harlesden Bassline, is the daughter of Sonny Roberts, the Jamaican-born producer credited with opening Britain's first black-owned recording studio, Planetone, in nearby Kilburn in 1961.
From BBC ● Jul. 4, 2026
Sonny tries to grab my hand, but I move it away.
From "On the Come Up" by Angie Thomas
My sonnies, I’ve got the very white trousers that I wore, at home in box now.
From Under the Greenwood Tree, or, the Mellstock quire; a rural painting of the Dutch school by Hardy, Thomas
"Then." said the fiddler, "I'll venture to name that the right and proper thing is "The Soldier's Joy" — there being a gallant soldier married into the farm — hey, my sonnies, and gentlemen all?"
From Far from the Madding Crowd by Hardy, Thomas
He says this, sonnies, loud and clear: 'Tell me this,' he says, 'how do they keep the crows off the wheat when you fellers comes to town?'
From The Soul of Susan Yellam by Vachell, Horace Annesley
Now stand stock-still there, my sonnies, one and all!
From Under the Greenwood Tree, or, the Mellstock quire; a rural painting of the Dutch school by Hardy, Thomas
So work away, my sonnies, and give us more surprises of this sort as often as you like.'
From Jo's Boys by Alcott, Louisa May
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.
