[f. BOY sb.1 + -HOOD.]
(Johnson has only the quotation from Swift, and says ‘This is perhaps an arbitrary word.’ It occurs in no edition of Bailey.) Cf. BOYISM 3.
a. The state of being a boy; the time of life during which one is a boy; also fig. the early period of anything. b. Boys taken collectively. c. Boyish feeling; light-heartedness.
a. 1745. Swift, Ess. Mod. Educ., in Wks. 1766, IV. 44 (J.). If you should look at him in his boyhood through the magnifying end of a perspective, and in his manhood, through the other, it would be impossible to spy any difference.
1802–25. Syd. Smith, Ess., 117 (Beeton’s ed.). All the bloody boyhood of the Bog of Allen.
1828. D’Israeli, Chas. I., I. ii. 8. Princes are unfortunate enough to be flattered even in their boyhood.
1829. Hood, Eug. Aram, iii. Turning to mirth all things of earth As only boyhood can.
1842. Tennyson, Sir Launc., 19. In the boyhood of the year.
1886. Mrs. A. Hunt, That other Pers., I. 206. The turbulent mass of kicking, plunging, and gesticulating boyhood.
