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Affinity • Attachment • Bonding • Casual • Cohabitation • Compersion • Concubinage • Courtship • Divorce • Dower, dowry and bride price • Friendship • Family • Husband • Infatuation • Intimacy • Jealousy • Limerence • Love • Marriage • Monogamy • Nonmonogamy • Office romance • Passion • Partner • Pederasty • Polygamy• Platonic love • Psychology of monogamy • Relationship abuse • Romance • Sexuality • Separation • Wedding • Widowhood • Wife |
A boyfriend is a male partner in a non-marital romantic relationship.
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Scope
The term is most commonly used to describe any male person, who is in a romantic relationship with another person. Partners in such non-marital relationships are also sometimes described as a significant other or simply partner, especially if the individuals are cohabitating. The differences between all these terms are subjective and their usage is ultimately determined by personal preference. When used by a boy or man about another male in a non-sexual, non-romantic context, the two-word form "boy friend" is sometimes used to avoid confusion with the sexual or romantic meaning. Though nuanced, there is a significant difference between girlfriend and boyfriend, and girl friend and boy friend. In a strictly grammatical sense, a girlfriend or boyfriend is an 'individual of significance' with whom one shares a relationship. A girl friend or boy friend, however, is simply a friend identified on the basis of gender. Since the pronunciation is the same, these words may occur to be false friends.
Word history
The word itself is relatively new -- its first usage in print known to the Oxford English Dictionary is in George W. E. Russell's Collections and recollections, by one who has kept a diary, in 1909.[1]
In the past it had implications of an illicit relationship (as sexual and romantic relationships outside marriage were generally frowned upon). It is now a generally accepted term, however, no longer having negative connotations. An earlier usage in print, dating from July 1889, is discussed in Neil Bartlett, Who Was That Man? A Present for Mr Oscar Wilde. On pages 108-110, Bartlett quotes from an issue of The Artist and Journal of Home Culture, which refers to Alectryon as "a boyfriend of Mars."
Synonyms
- Certain terms suggest an older man, e.g. daddy, gentleman caller, gentleman friend, main man, man, old man, sugar daddy, while the contrary is true of young man (and the gender-neutral baby)
Additionally, gender-indiscriminate terms also apply, e.g. lover, heartthrob, paramour, squeeze, sweetheart, true love and some more specific terms such as cavalier, wooer, and gender-neutral ones like date, escort, steady or suitor; furthermore, non-gender specific euphemisms such as admirer, companion,
- leman or lemman, an archaic word for "sweetheart, paramour," from Medieval English leofman (c.1205), from Old English leof (cognate of Dutch lief, German lieb) "dear" + man "human being, person" was originally applied to either gender, but remarkably usually meant mistress
- Users of Internet slang often shorten boyfriend to the acronym bf or the contraction boyf.[2]
