Boy's Own tale
- noun
- Archaic
:
cuento aventurero
- The movie had all the elements of a classic Boy's Own tale, from hidden treasure to daring rescues.
Examples
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The exploits of explorers in the nineteenth century often read like a Boy's Own tale.
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The book was a classic Boy's Own tale of adventure.
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His journey across the desert turned into a real Boy's Own tale filled with danger and heroism.
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He always dreamed of living a Boy's Own tale!
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His journey across the desert turned into a real Boy's Own tale filled with danger and heroism.
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The exploits of explorers in the nineteenth century often read like a Boy's Own tale.
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The movie had all the elements of a classic Boy's Own tale, from hidden treasure to daring rescues.
Synonyms
2
2.3
A story with exciting, risky events about travel and danger
1
4.3
A story about a brave person who faces danger, for example a knight fighting a dragon
1
3.1
A story about exciting, often dangerous journeys where people do brave things
How Adventurous
Surface Forms
Morphology
The words 'boy's' and 'tale' clearly signal a story associated with boys, so a learner could guess it refers to a kind of story; however, the specific connotation — an old‑fashioned, adventurous magazine‑style heroic story — depends on cultural/phraseological knowledge (e.g. the historical Boy's Own Paper) and is not fully predictable from the constituents alone. Because some sense is recoverable but the conventional, genre-specific meaning requires prior exposure, this is best classified as semi-transparent.
Etymology
Boy's Own tale comes from old magazines like the 'Boy's Own Paper' that printed short stories of brave boys, treasure hunts and daring rescues. Because those pages showed brave, exciting action, the phrase now means 'an exciting, old-fashioned adventure story'.