butcher boy

Noun

butcher boy (plural butcher boys)

1. (predominantly Australia) A woodlouse, any of various terrestrial crustaceans of the suborder Oniscidea.
   • Today I stood on a butcher boy. He died. I feel bad.2006 October 17, Rivetting, “Butcher Boy/Pill Bug/Rolly Polly”, in Have you been Rivetted?
   • Common names for woodlice vary throughout the English-speaking world. They include roly-poly, pill bug (usually applied only to the genus Armadillidium), sow bug, […] butcher boy, daddy gramfer / daddy gampfer (West Country), Granny Grey (South Wales), cheesybug (Kent), and cheeselog.2018 June 25, “Pillbugs”, in Niles Biological, Inc., archived from the original on 21 Dec 2018
2. A man or boy who works for a butcher shop; a butcher's boy.
   • Bob prick’d his lug and scratch’d his pate / For he was flushed with joy, / To think that he should be revenge’d / Upon the Butcher Boy.1839, Thomas Webber, Bob Malton and the Butcher Boy, page 6

   Synonyms:

   woodlouse, gigolo

3. (euphemistic, slang, uncommon) A male prostitute.
   • He had clearly become a satyr once again, as evidenced by the rosy-faced butcher-boy that Moore met upon visiting him. The word butcher-boy was, like telegraph-boy, a euphemism for a male prostitute1997, Ellis Hanson, “The Dialectic of Shame and Grace”, in Decadence and Catholicism, →OCLC, page 81

   Synonyms:

   rent boy

4. (US) Batting at a pitch with a short swing from a bunt position; a slash bunt, a slug bunt.
   • One of his [Casey Stengel's] more practical creations? The butcher boy, in which a batter would draw the infield in by squaring up to bunt ... only to quickly pull it back and take a short, downward swing at the ball.2016 June 14, “The origin stories behind 11 uniquely strange baseball terms”, in MLB.com, retrieved 26 Jun 2018