houseboy
house·boy/ˈhaʊsbɔɪ/noun
houseboy is a noun meaning “A young male domestic servant, especially in a British colony in former times” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled H-O-U-S-E-B-O-Y and has 2 syllables (house·boy), and it appears about once in every 15 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of houseboy is houseboys.
What does houseboy mean?
noun
- 1
A young male domestic servant, especially in a British colony in former times.
- 2
derogatoryoffensiveA non-white adult male domestic servant.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce houseboy?
- US /ˈhaʊsbɔɪ/
Houseboy has 2 syllables, split house·boy in writing.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-I_learned_some_phrases-houseboy.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of houseboy
- houseboys plural
- houseboi
- house boy
- house-boy
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is houseboy?
Houseboy appears about once in every 15 million words in written English, the 117,098th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Houseboy in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense young male domestic servant, especially in a British colony in former times:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| Spanish | mucamo |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does houseboy come from?
From house + boy (“young male; (historical or offensive) non-white male servant regardless of age”).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).