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bo

interjectionnounnounparticlephrasecommon in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//bəʊ//
  • United States//boʊ//
  • /[boː˨˦]/

An exclamation used to startle or frighten.

interjection

  1. 1

    An exclamation used to startle or frighten.

    We may fairely cry bo-bo-boe; it may well make us hoarse, but it will nothing advaunce it.

Etymology

Imitative.

noun

  1. 1

    slangFellow, chap, boy.

    ‘Never heard of him,’ he smiled. ‘On your way, bo.’

Etymology

Probably a shortening of boy.

noun

  1. 1

    A quarterstaff, especially in an oriental context.

Etymology

From Japanese 棒 (bō), from Middle Chinese 棒 (baewng^X, “staff, club”) (compare modern Chinese 棒 (bàng)).

particle

  1. 1

    Final interrogative particle, used to invite agreement.

    Swee bo?

  2. 2

    Final interrogative particle, forming a yes-no question from a declarative statement.

Etymology

From Hokkien 無 /无 (bô).

phrase

  1. 1

    Variant of best ofInitialism of best of: Often directly precedes an odd number.

    Best-of-three (bo3) Group Stage Match Information

Etymology

Initialism of best of.

Forms

plural
bos
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).