pretty boy

noun

informal + usually disparaging
: a man who is notably good-looking
also : dandy sense 1

Examples of pretty boy in a Sentence

Movie critics seem to finally agree that this pretty boy can act. a downtown dance club with lots of pretty boys in attendance
Recent Examples on the Web How to adopt: Interested adopters can meet pretty boy Pepper at the Arizona Humane Society’s South Mountain location. The Republic, The Arizona Republic, 21 Jan. 2023 Austin Butler’s version of Elvis is a sulky pretty boy with smokey-eye makeup, loud silk shirts, and lips the color and texture of bubblegum. Katie Rife, Vulture, 24 June 2022 Brave, brilliant, ugly Cyrano yearns for Roxane (Evelyn Miller), who has fallen in love with pretty boy Christian (Eben Figueiredo), a soldier who has just enlisted in Cyrano’s tough-talking military regiment. Helen Shaw, Vulture, 14 Apr. 2022 John Boyega plays Dahomey’s young king, Ghezo, a benevolent if somewhat pretty boy leader who takes on soft diplomacy while deploying his Agojie to collect the heads of his enemies. Tribune News Service, cleveland, 16 Sep. 2022 This was the last time Leo would try to headline a big-budget movie still looking like the pretty boy of Titanic; after this, his next four films were for either Martin Scorsese or Steven Spielberg. Tim Grierson, Vulture, 29 Dec. 2021 To compare his 1955 Newman, a pretty boy whose smile is a quick squiggle, with the Newman of 2002, his features still handsome but etched by the passage of a half-century, is an epitome in two drawings of Hirschfeld’s art. Terry Teachout, WSJ, 6 Apr. 2021 Nicole Kidman plays war correspondent Martha Gellhorn opposite yet another pretty boy cast as Hemingway, Clive Owen. Chris Hewitt, Star Tribune, 2 Apr. 2021 This Ben is a Machiavellian tactician, wrapped up in a pretty boy body with a rumbling inner-squid. Tamara Fuentes, Seventeen, 11 Jan. 2021

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'pretty boy.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

First Known Use

1835, in the meaning defined above

Time Traveler
The first known use of pretty boy was in 1835

Dictionary Entries Near pretty boy

Cite this Entry

“Pretty boy.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pretty%20boy. Accessed 19 Apr. 2024.

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