boy Friday
1
8.6
- noun
- Archaic
:
asistente
- Whenever she needs something done, her boy Friday is always there to help with a smile.
Examples
-
He works as my boy Friday, handling everything from scheduling meetings to running errands.
-
But if you want to take me under your wing, I'm your assistant, your right-hand man, your boy Friday, the Jimmy Olsen to your Superman, the Watson to your Holmes... "The Captain to my Tennille?" "Yeah, something like that," Guff said with a laugh.
Fiction book (1999) -
As a new employee, I quickly became her boy Friday, helping with various tasks around the office.
Synonyms
26
2.2
A young man who delivers food and packages to homes by bicycle or motorbike
17
3.2
A young person paid to do small tasks such as delivering messages and packages
11
7.3
A young man who does cleaning, serving, and errands in a private home
6
2.3
A boy who delivers messages and does small jobs for a business
1
2.6
A young man who does simple office tasks like running errands and delivering messages
1
2.7
A young man who helps customers in a store
1
8.4
A loyal, reliable person who helps a leader with many tasks
A young boy who runs small errands in a hotel or house
Antonyms
Surface Forms
Morphology
boy + Friday
The sense 'male assistant' is not compositionally derivable from the constituents: 'boy' just denotes a young male and 'Friday' is a day name/proper noun, so their combination does not transparently yield 'assistant'. The phrase is an allusive idiom (derived from Defoe's 'Man Friday') and requires cultural or lexicalized knowledge beyond knowing the individual words, so a B1 learner would not infer the meaning reliably.
Etymology
Boy Friday comes from the name Friday in the book Robinson Crusoe, who was a faithful helper, and the word boy was later added to mean a helper who does many small jobs. That's why 'boy Friday' now means 'a male assistant who does a variety of tasks'.