donkey-boy
donkey-boy noun: a person (usually, but not always, a boy) who cares for and drives a donkey that carries a tourist or the luggage of a tourist.
Noun
donkey-boy (plural donkey-boys)
- A person (usually, but not always, a boy) who cares for and drives a donkey that carries a tourist or the luggage of a tourist.
- He said, further, that, in the whole course of his experience, north and south, he had never fallen in with any to match the Cairo donkey-boys.1869, Howard Hopley, Under Egyptian Palms; or, Three Bachelors' Journeys On the Nile
- But the people upon the rock had no time to think of the cruel fate of the donkey-boys..1898, Arthur Conan Doyle, A Desert Drama
Verb
donkey-boy (third-person singular simple present donkey-boys, present participle donkey-boying, simple past and past participle donkey-boyed)
- To work as a donkey-boy (for)
- But no, she said, 'He be "donkey-boying" down on the sands at L—. Wonderful set on donkeys his mind has been ever since the time he was a boy; seems like they was fellow-beings for him.'1907, Horace Gordon Hutchinson, Nature's Moods and Tenses, page 282
- A new Mohammed Hassan, who donkey-boyed me, told me Botros had ten thousand feddans and Aboo Stayt eight thousand, figures varying much from the old Md. Hassan's, three years ago.1936, Charles Edwin Wilbour, Jean Capart, Travels in Egypt, page 378
Examples of donkey-boy in a sentence
- All our donkey-boys, except Joseph, seemed to be called Mohammed, and Joseph's name was not really Joseph—he had only adopted it for the convenience of English patrons.2013, Douglas Sladen, Queer Things About Egypt:
- Mohammed, when he was not donkey-boying, was the chief howling dervish of Luxor.2013, Douglas Sladen, Queer Things About Egypt:
Forms of donkey-boy
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | donkey-boys |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | donkey-boys |
| present participle | donkey-boying |
| past participle | donkey-boyed |
| past | donkey-boyed |
Origin of donkey-boy
From donkey + boy.
Questions about donkey-boy
- What does donkey-boy mean?
- Donkey-boy means a person (usually, but not always, a boy) who cares for and drives a donkey that carries a tourist or the luggage of a tourist.
- How do you use donkey-boy in a sentence?
- All our donkey-boys, except Joseph, seemed to be called Mohammed, and Joseph's name was not really Joseph—he had only adopted it for the convenience of English patrons.
- What part of speech is donkey-boy?
- Donkey-boy can be a noun or a verb.
- What is the plural of donkey-boy?
- The plural of donkey-boy is donkey-boys.
Words near donkey-boy in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: donkey-boy (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this entry: “donkey-boy.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/donkey-boy. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.