I. noun
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
a baby boy/girl
▪
She’s just had a lovely healthy baby girl.
a lucky man/woman/boy/girl
▪
Your son’s a lucky man, having a father like you.
altar boy
backroom boy
ball boy
blue-eyed boy
bovver boy (= someone who behaves in a violent way )
boy band
boy racer
Boy Scout
boy toy
boy wonder
▪
Robson, the boy wonder of the department
boys and girls
▪
Both boys and girls can apply to join the choir.
bully boy
cabin boy
day boy
delinquent girls/boys/children/teenagers
fair-haired boy
▪
the boss’s fair-haired boy
frat boy (= member of a fraternity )
▪
a frat boy
head boy
little boy/girl
▪
two little boys playing in the street
mama's boy
▪
You’ve got to stand up for yourself, stop being such a mama’s boy.
messenger boy
mother's boy
mummy's boy
office boy
old boy
▪
an old boys’ reunion
orphan girl/boy/child
▪
a poor little orphan girl
poor boy
principal boy
rent boy
sb’s little boy/girl (= someone’s son or daughter who is still a child )
▪
Mum, I’m 17 – I’m not your little girl any longer.
stable boy
teddy boy
the big boys (= the most powerful people or companies )
the birthday girl/boy informal (= the person whose birthday it is )
▪
Here comes the birthday girl!
the new boy/girl British English (= the newest person in a job, organization etc – used humorously )
toy boy
water boy
whipping boy
wide boy
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADJECTIVE
bad
▪
Poor Col. He wasn't a bad boy , just easily led.
▪
As after all I was not a bad little boy but I was shy and covered it up by bravado.
▪
Then old man Lawton goes missing and suspicion fixes on his son, Ronny, the local bad boy .
▪
His bad boy always drove me to my vivacious good girl.
▪
He always presented himself as the redeemed bad boy , but it was a lie, she says.
▪
He is not a bad boy .
▪
Another rehabilitated star admitting he was a bad boy .
▪
Roberts' eyes widen, as if Gibson was the school bad boy and had just told off the principal.
big
▪
Bethlehem was a new record company in 1957 and gathered this huge gang together to show up the big boys .
▪
Now it is the turn of some of those big boys to suffer.
▪
He plays with the big boys and wants their respect.
▪
United lit the fuse for a quality cup tie by giving everything they had against the big boys from the premier league.
▪
Six of the biggest black-coated boys ran over, surrounding his car.
▪
He wasn't a man, only a big , overgrown boy , and he looked quite crazy and terrifying.
▪
Patricia Ireland, the pillbox hat-wearing, scotch-pouring servant, had taken on the big boys and come out ahead.
black
▪
The wooden black boy in the corner was identifiable by his white gloves in the gloom.
▪
The black boy was down there telling Petey all his old secrets.
▪
Errol: The teachers are for ever picking on the black boys .
▪
The least black boy swung his head from side to side, turned, and ran for the door.
▪
Along with rap artists and basketball players, these are the black men the black boys look up to.
▪
Each stays on his own side of the day room the way the black boys want it.
▪
The black boys move in with the flashlights.
▪
All the black boys knew it.
dear
▪
John's face, the dear boy .
▪
I do not need it and will set it aside for you, my dear boy , to complete your studies.
▪
It is all very agreeable but please, my dear boy , don't allow yourself to take it seriously.
▪
I didn't want to send the dear little boy home alone.
▪
I must have unnerved you, dear boy .
golden
▪
From the very beginning, Tordella was the golden boy of the Puzzle Palace.
▪
Ratner is not a fallen golden boy of the Thatcher era, nor a victim of his own jokes.
▪
Terms such as thought leader, golden boy , or winner refer to people with a power base of reputation.
▪
They are golden boys , about 17 or 18, and apparently weightless.
▪
So golden boy had flipped - this week?
▪
First full season for Formula One's new golden boy .
▪
Gone in an instant was that jovial giant, that golden boy , that chestnut-haired youth whom everyone admired.
good
▪
Dope and cocaine have become accessible to the grips, the gaffers and the best boys .
▪
But even marriage to a good old boy has not opened all arms to Fonda.
▪
Four decades ago in Britain girls were getting better results than boys in the 11-plus exam.
▪
But so happen, one little boy not so good .
▪
Questions relating to counting and calculating with whole numbers are generally tackled by girls as well as or better than by boys .
▪
Derek Jensen, best boy grip -- second unit; and Ronald Beale, chiropractor.
▪
Who better than the guy everybody thought was just a good time boy ?
▪
This was where good boys came after they got killed by Rupert.
little
▪
He was always a horrid little boy for all his pretty face, and now he's a horrid man.
▪
Except one little boy , who, though he had heard about the clothes, believed his eyes and not his ears.
▪
The little boy was strong and he flourished.
▪
Here is one of the stories: A little boy is playing in his room.
▪
What the little boys remembered about his class was that he made divinity fun, even though it was before breakfast.
▪
Seeing through the pretense, my little boy let go of my coat and walked on silently with downcast eyes.
▪
After Madeleine left, Edouard spent more and more time with the little boy -every free moment.
▪
She is followed closely by a little boy , who keeps ducking behind her whenever Yolanda smiles at him.
naughty
▪
A shower of gravel barely missed me, hurled by naughty boys who played among the ruins, ambushing one another.
▪
In the later poets he was her son and almost invariably a mischievous, naughty boy , or worse.
▪
He is always pleased to see his nursery teacher but is terrified that she will think he is a naughty boy .
▪
Flat five: Beatrice, for naughty boys .
▪
It appears the naughty boys were in the altogether just as a primary school field trip walked past.
▪
Keith, hyperactive and aggressive, a naughty boy .
▪
He was the town naughty boy all right, and it was incongruous that he should have been named Wesley.
old
▪
Gardner-Medwin proposed screening 18 month old boys who are not walking as an approach to the problem of delayed diagnosis.
▪
Did sky and grass whirl together and breath grow short in that first encounter with the rough older boy ?
▪
Ballantyne's boys are about twenty five years old and the oldest boy in Golding's book is only just twelve.
▪
Eric Hahn will replace Marc Andreessen, the 26-year-\#old wonder boy who helped to write the Mosaic browser.
▪
He and Kasturbai, and sometimes the older boys , carried out the pots.
▪
But they could have cost an 8 year old boy his life.
▪
She stayed with them in the cottage and helped Benjamin during the day while the older boys hunted.
poor
▪
I try to convince myself that it's conditioning, the poor boy and his fears of success.
▪
A third close friend, Ed Prince, learned early that poor boys whose fathers die young could not succeed at business.
▪
And there in the garden, a long way from the house, was that poor dead boy , my husband.
▪
David Copperfield about a poor boy who is mistreated by people that was very sad.
▪
This type of program would really score with poor reading football-mad boys .
▪
The poor boys , innocent boys, the fragile flame of life snuffed out suddenly and so much candle left!
▪
He was a poor boy from Scarborough, who went to Manchester.
▪
For a moment, then, the pity Ahab feels for the poor crazed Negro boy nearly swerves him from his course.
small
▪
He admits he's just a small boy at heart.
▪
My first year, out of all five hundred students I was the smallest boy .
▪
The small boy ate ten griddle cakes and the man eight.
▪
The small boy from the pier was led away by a gray-haired woman.
▪
Some small boys come down the track towards me.
▪
Perhaps he was looking for pictures in the clouds, as he had done as a small boy .
▪
She had tales to tell of him as a small boy , as a young man.
▪
He was a small boy sitting in the yard of their house.
teenage
▪
Two teenage boys were threatened with castration to force their Tesco manager father to take cash from his store safe.
▪
They were joined by teenage boys who surged in waves from the neighboring Mir-i-Arab Madrasa, a religious school.
▪
Men and teenage boys went fishing every day, usually in small groups.
▪
The Harlem riot erupted when an off-duty policeman killed James Powell, a teenage boy who had allegedly attacked him.
▪
She kisses lightly, licks around the tip, and he's proud like a teenage boy .
▪
A strong teenage boy lost half his 140 pounds in seven weeks.
▪
The only computers in many villages are those owned by the teenage boys of the affluent to play their wham-bam games.
▪
Across the street, half a dozen teenage boys hunch over a broken bicycle.
young
▪
Two young boys , of around ten years of age, drawing closer, then parallel, now swiftly passing, past.
▪
Last Sunday, a young boy was brought in.
▪
More of the girls, who tended on average to be slightly younger than the boys , were still at school.
▪
How many young boys grew up longing for such distinction?
▪
The bodies of two young boys have been stitched back together in the mortuary of this place.
▪
By the time Derek Dashwood first saw it as a young boy in 1952, it was falling into disrepair.
▪
The day's most successful report is the interview with a young boy accused of stealing a leather jacket.
▪
Man is so constructed that such isolation is too immense to conceive and the young cabin boy loses his rational faculties.
■ NOUN
baby
▪
Thankfully, the name has been shortened and the unfortunate baby boy goes by the moniker Iuma Dylan-Lucas.
▪
Only 25, she has a 4-year-old daughter, twin baby boys and no husband.
▪
Read in studio A baby boy narrowly escaped death when his pram was crushed between a car and a garden wall.
▪
Helen and Jack got married too -- on James Joyce's birthday -- had a baby boy and moved to the Midwest.
▪
The baby boy went blue after his lungs became blocked.
▪
In Mashpee, two parents were indicted on charges of abuse that left their baby boy blind and brain damaged.
▪
The result was a healthy, blue-eyed baby boy .
▪
A young couple I know has just been blessed with a new baby boy .
PHRASES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
a slip of a girl/boy etc
all work and no play (makes Jack a dull boy)
glamour girl/boy
▪
There are of course differences between the 1930s and late twentieth-century interpretations of the glamour girl.
golden boy/girl
▪
She's Hollywood's current golden girl.
▪
Completing the trio of golden girls is Millicent Martin - it's a formidable combination.
▪
Even without mistakes, the halo effect eventually wears off when some one else emerges as the new golden girl.
▪
First full season for Formula One's new golden boy.
▪
From the very beginning, Tordella was the golden boy of the Puzzle Palace.
▪
Ratner is not a fallen golden boy of the Thatcher era, nor a victim of his own jokes.
▪
So golden boy had flipped - this week?
▪
Terms such as thought leader, golden boy, or winner refer to people with a power base of reputation.
▪
They are golden boys, about 17 or 18, and apparently weightless.
good girl/boy/dog etc
▪
Good boys, good boys, good boys.
▪
He's a good boy, and he's very strong.
▪
He coughed, told Oliver to dry his eyes and be a good boy, and walked on with him in silence.
▪
He had been a very good boy indeed.
▪
I am Pa's best boy.
▪
I tried to be a good girl and stay out of the way.
▪
Randolph worked his hardest, pulling away, while Santa delivered all the presents to the good boys and girls.
▪
This was where good boys came after they got killed by Rupert.
jobs for the boys
▪
It smacks of jobs for the boys.
▪
The hon. Gentleman is always talking about jobs for the boys.
man and boy
▪
Dozens of men and boys take turns trading shots with him.
▪
In the first scene he showed how men and boys prepared for combat and self-defence.
▪
It seemed incredible; what would the Axis want with a bunch of small-town men and boys led by a band conductor?
▪
On 25 May, 1812, the Felling pit in Durham exploded, killing 92 men and boys.
▪
That was fine when manpower was cheap and farming was labour intensive, when families worked in the fields man and boy.
▪
The men and boys were lined up and marched off in one direction, and women and children in another.
▪
The twenty-six men and boys were martyred.
▪
These barbarians are young men and boys, in their teens and early twenties.
separate the men from the boys
the old-boy network
there's a good boy/clever dog etc
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪
Harry teaches in a boys' school in Glasgow.
▪
He put a hand on the boy 's shoulder and walked with him down the hall.
▪
I used to live in Spain when I was a boy .
▪
My two boys are still in college.
▪
There are only five boys in the class.
▪
Why don't you go play with that little boy over there?
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪
A confrontation developed and the aggrieved boy decided to take the matter to the headmaster.
▪
At last, the morning came when Oliver was allowed to go out to work with the two other boys.
▪
Down the hall in a waiting room, volunteer Eula Gray finishes reading a story to a little boy .
▪
It is the stuff of ivory towers and only clever boys and girls are expected to reflect upon its themes.
▪
She looked at the boy now.
▪
The boys outpaced the girls in mechanical, verbal, and abstract reasoning, space relations, and numerical ability.
II. interjection
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪
Boy , that chicken was good!