Hacker News Reader

Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

So is “boys night out” but you wouldn’t refer to grown men as boys.

Sure you could: "that board of directors is a boys club" is not a statement about some corporation being literally run by children.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

In many of your comments you discuss your girlfriend. Should we assume that you're talking about an underage girl?

If you're going to engage in this sort of weird pedantry you should be careful lest you paint yourself a pederast.

There is no female equivalent to "guy", so "girl" is used instead.

You're intentionally misinterpreting things.

Isn’t “gal” the equivalent?

That makes you sound like a rootin' tootin' cowboy.

I don’t know if this is a cultural thing, but at least in California I hear the word “boys” used to refer to grown men pretty frequently.

I’ve never heard a grown man referred to as a “boy” except in the pejorative sense/as part of a turn of phrase.

It's common in my friend group (late 20s, early 30s) in CA, and as far as I know, it's also common farther out than that. Not pejorative.

'Boys from the Blackstuff' :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boys_from_the_Blackstuff

'American Red Cross – Our boys need SOX' :

https://propagandaposterstore.com/product/american-red-cross...

'Old boy' :

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/old-boy

edit - could also just go straight to the entry for 'boy' :

'a male child or, more generally, a male of any age'

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/boy

Here's [1] an example of using the word "boys" to refer to young men on a college football team in a way that I don't think fits either category. I used a northwestern fan site given the email address in your profile, but I found similar examples across lots of different sites.

[1] https://www.insidenu.com/2017/8/30/16200774/northwestern-foo...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com