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boyfriend

nounverbcommon in dialogue

  • United States//ˈbɔɪˌfɹɛnd//
  • United States//ˈbɔɪfɹənd//

A male partner in an unmarried romantic relationship.

noun

  1. 1

    A male partner in an unmarried romantic relationship.

    I was playing the drums and my boyfriend was playing the electric guitar.

    If I was your boyfriend, I’d never let you go / I can take you places you ain’t never been before.

    Referring to someone as your boyfriend or girlfriend suggests several things about your relationship, said Leah Carey, a sex and relationship coach and podcast host of “Good Girls Talk About Sex.”

    Whether he’s interested in the latest tech, takes pride in his personal style or loves spending his free time in the gym, these meaningful gifts for boyfriends are sure to win his heart all over again.

  2. 2

    A male friend.

  3. 3

    A style of women's clothing that draws heavily from corresponding men's garments.

Etymology

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *bʰā- Proto-Germanic *bō- Proto-West Germanic *bōjō Old English *bōia Middle English boye English boy Proto-Indo-European *preyH- Proto-Indo-European *-ós Proto-Indo-European *priHós Proto-Germanic *frijōną Proto-Germanic *frijōndz Proto-West Germanic *friund Old English frēond Middle English frend English friend English boyfriend From boy + friend.

verb

  1. 1

    informalTo be a boyfriend to (someone).

    3- the cutie pie, shadiah , the turk beaut who impoverished actor @imad Hemdi (of ikhmeem, upper egypt) when married together, who cost fereed il etresh his voice, when boyfriending her, who now is miT TereHa=veiled ( thanks 2 sheikh she@rawi ) :

    That says the boyfriend WAS an NPC Promoter/Judge AT THE TIME he was 'boyfriending' her, and she was SIXTEEN.

    *I* married exactly 4 years after I began "boyfriending" with Silvana, and my 2nd daughter Natalia was born exactly 31 years after me :-PPPPPPPPPP

  2. 2

    informalTo have (someone) as a boyfriend.

    Rina is out boyfriending, God help us. The last one she brought back was terrible.

    Her husband hurries home after work; her sister, if not boyfriending or tired, takes the girls and Max on subsidized trips to the Rubins’ favorite café, where they are petted and given mugs of cappuccino foam.

    Poor Seth. He has it bad for Marisol. He buzzes around her constantly like a big, sweaty fly, and she’s too nice to tell him to back off. Also, boyfriending him seems to do absolutely nothing to deter him.

Forms

plural
boyfriends
past tense
boyfriended
past participle
boyfriended
present participle
boyfriending
third person singular
boyfriends
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).