golden boy

noun

"golden-boy" is a 9-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.

The verdict

“golden boy” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.

Unranked
below top-frequency English
10
letters

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - A young man who has become unusually successful at an early age.

Corpus desk

Index EN-golden-boy · golden boy · English

golden boy · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables

  • FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
  • LEN-MEGA 10 letters
  • VOW-4 4 vowels
  • CONFUS-0 No pairs
  • VAR-0 0 variants
  • BOOK-THIN "G" thin
  • PHOTO-UNK Peer pending

Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern

Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.

Key facts for golden boy
PropertyValue
Headwordgolden boy
LanguageEnglish
Part of speechNoun
Letters10
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Long-tail rank of “golden boy” in English

golden boyranks outside the top 100,000 English headwords, in the long tail of specialist, archaic, or seldom-used vocabulary, exactly the territory where a reader stops mid-sentence to double-check spelling.

Beyond rank #100,000. Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list.

Rare enough to double-check

golden boy is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.

golden boy has no tracked misspelling variants, since its letter pattern doesn't lend itself to common typo substitutions. No confusable counterpart is on file for this word, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.

No documented word history exists for this headword, so its spelling is best read as a straightforward mapping from sound to letter. The correct English form is golden boy, spelled G-O-L-D-E-N- -B-O-Y.

Definition

  1. 1
    A young man who has become unusually successful at an early age.
  2. 2
    A favored youth, held in high esteem by others, and for whom there are high hopes.

Recorded use

Wiktionary examples

These source excerpts show how golden boy appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.

  1. Bill Gates was the golden boy of the software industry in the early 1980s.
  2. On Friday, November 17, 2023, around noon Pacific time, Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, Silicon Valley’s golden boy, avatar of the generative AI revolution, logged on to a Google Meet to see four of his five board members staring at him.

Synonyms

child prodigy

Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "golden boy"?
"golden boy" is spelled G-O-L-D-E-N- -B-O-Y.
What does "golden boy" mean?
As a noun, "golden boy" means: A young man who has become unusually successful at an early age.
What language does "golden boy" come from?
"golden boy" is a English word. PlainSpell's reference spans five languages -- English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German -- with definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data for each.
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Yes, PlainSpell is a completely free word reference. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, confusable pairs, homophones, and spelling corrections across 5 languages without any sign-up or subscription.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list