butcher boy

English

Pronunciation

Audio (General Australian): (file)

Noun

butcher boy (plural butcher boys)

(predominantly Australia) A woodlouse, any of various terrestrial crustaceans of the suborder Oniscidea.
- 2006 October 17, Rivetting, “Butcher Boy/Pill Bug/Rolly Polly”, in Have you been Rivetted?‎^[1]:
  Today I stood on a butcher boy. He died. I feel bad.
- 2018 June 25, “Pillbugs”, in Niles Biological, Inc.‎^[2]:
  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.
A man or boy who works for a butcher shop; a butcher's boy.
- 1839, Thomas Webber, Bob Malton and the Butcher Boy‎^[3], page 6:
  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.
(uncommon, slang, euphemistic) A male prostitute.
- 1997, Ellis Hanson, “The Dialectic of Shame and Grace”, in Decadence and Catholicism, →OCLC, page 81:
  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 prostitute
(US, baseball) Batting at a pitch with a short swing from a bunt position; a slash bunt, a slug bunt.
- 2016 June 14, “The origin stories behind 11 uniquely strange baseball terms”, in MLB.com‎^[4], retrieved June 26, 2018:
  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.

Synonyms

(woodlouse): See Thesaurus:woodlouse
(male prostitute): rent boy, gigolo; see also Thesaurus:prostitute