Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A youth employed as a servant or page.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A boy in waiting; an attendant in livery; a lackey; a link-boy.
Wiktionary
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. A page; an attendant in livery; a lackey.
Etymologies
- From foot + boy. (Wiktionary)
Examples
“Robert Melville, who appeared to have been using some soothing language — “No! no! no! I tell thee, no! I will place a petard against the door rather than be baulked by a profligate woman, and bearded by an insolent footboy.””
“She told her name, and was shewn, by a little shabby footboy, into a parlour.”
“Injury is on the other side a good man's footboy, his fidus Acliates, and as a lackey follows him wheresoever he goes.”
“A small sharp – looking lad, half – footboy and half – clerk, who was very much out of breath, but who looked at me as if he defied me to prove it legally, presented himself.”
“There were gates to open, and Hepburn jumped down to open them, as if he were the footboy.”
“Extreme cold is very well expressed in the slip-shod footboy, and the girl who is warming her hands.”
“Even before his apprenticeship to Mr. John Lambert, he felt he was not appreciated or understood; perhaps no one ever _acted_ a greater satire upon his own profession than this harsh attorney, who deemed his apprentice on a level with his footboy.”
“Molly stayed twittering by the door, wonderful because she saw her King of Men cringing like a footboy before a shorter than himself.”
“Honest Roger, the red-haired coachman, would have looked like a clown in a pantomime, in front of a fashionable equipage; and Simon the footboy, who slouched at my back, would have been mistaken for an idle urchin surreptitiously enjoying a ride.”
The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction Volume 14, No. 400, November 21, 1829
“Definitions of "Jack" include: boots; a diminutive of John used contemptuously to mean a saucy fellow; a footboy who pulls off his master's boots; a scream; a male; American slang for a stranger; American slang for a jackass; a cunning fellow who can do anything - such as a "Jack of all trades.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘footboy’.
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Mollusque's miscellany
A mixture of words that I like or have commented on, along with ones parked here so they'd be listed somewhere or remind me of lists I want to make.
oranger, monographer, preoccupied, bu, bobization, coinventor, tetrapyloctomy, borgmannian, suspercollate, manhug, mancrush, obituarist and 604 more...
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Gil Blas
Interesting words and usages from Smollett's 1749 translation of Lesage's L'Histoire de Gil Blas de Santillane
reck, durance, rhodomontade, hangdog, trap, lustre, pin, boggle, dandle, birthday suit, colic, gripes and 238 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for footboy.
yarb We placed ourselves at table, where having a chambermaid and a footboy for eye-witnesses, we kept within the bounds of brother and sister.
- Lesage, The Adventures of Gil Blas of Santillane, tr. Smollett, bk 7 ch. 6 Sep 30, 2008