scally boy
- noun
- Slang
:
chico travieso
- That scally boy is always causing trouble!
Examples
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Why is that scally boy throwing stones again?
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The teacher sighed as another scally boy disrupted her lesson.
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My mum warned me not to hang around with that scally boy from down the street.
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The scally boy always gets into trouble at school.
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My mum warned me not to hang around with that scally boy from down the street.
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The scally boy always gets into trouble at school.
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The teacher sighed as another scally boy disrupted her lesson.
Synonyms
11
6.5
A person, often a child, who plays tricks and causes small trouble
A playful person often a boy who causes small trouble
A man who is playful and a little rude in a friendly way people like
A likable person who plays small tricks and breaks rules for fun
Antonyms
How Mischievous
Surface Forms
Morphology
scally + boy
The structure is a simple adjective + noun composition: if a learner knows 'scally' means 'mischievous/troublesome', combining it with 'boy' yields the predictable meaning 'mischievous boy'. Note that 'scally' is regional/dialectal and may be unknown to many learners, but given knowledge of the constituent words the meaning is transparently compositional.
Etymology
Scally boy may come from an older word scally from 'scallywag' that people used for a little 'rascal', and they added boy to name a cheeky youngster. So the image of a small troublemaker is why it means a mischievous or troublesome boy.