house-boy
house-boy is the alternative form of houseboy.
Meaning of houseboy
Noun
houseboy (plural houseboys)
- A young male domestic servant, especially in a British colony in former times.
- House servants are usually either Chinese or Tamil, the former predominating, especially in towns of any size. The domestic staff will in general consist of a houseboy (in large establishments two houseboys), a water carrier (tukang ayer), whose duties include washing dishes and preparing baths, a...1935, Ralph Lionel German, Handbook to British Malaya, 1935, [London]: [R. L. German]: Obtainable from the Malay Information Agency, Waterlow and Sons, →OCLC, page 50
- A non-white adult male domestic servant.
Forms of house-boy
| plural | house-boys |
|---|
Questions about house-boy
- What is house-boy the alternative form of?
- House-boy is the alternative form of houseboy.
Words near house-boy in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: house-boy (page history and authors); houseboy (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: “house-boy.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/house-boy. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.