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by el_pollo_diablo 519 days ago
> boy

And nouns as interjections.

3 comments

I think of the interjection "boy" as being some 1930s-1950s movie speak for earnest young people expressing surprise or excitement about something, not office related at all.
>And nouns as interjections.

Nouns?

"Boy" as an interjection, used for emphasis, has been used for over a century.

From Oxford English Dictionary[1]:

>boy: interjection (colloquial, originally U.S.). 1894–

>Expressing shock, surprise, excitement, appreciation, etc. Frequently used to give emphasis to the following statement.

You also say it as if it were unusual for interjection to be nouns.

Spoiler alert, that's not the case.

God is an obvious example (God is it tiring to see falsehoods online); so is surprise!, and many others.

All of that has nothing to do with office jargon.

[1] https://www.oed.com/dictionary/boy_n1#15546734

My comment was meant as a joke, given the context. I am familiar with these interjections, even as a non-native anglophone. Sorry for the time you took to write a good reply.
What's there to be sorry about?

It was fun for me to dig in and find out just how long boy as an interjection has been around for (which is, by far, not an obvious thing regardless of whether one speaks English natively or not).

Same goes for trying to think of other nouns which are used as interjections (the Wikipedia article on interjections lists very few, if any, nouns).

So it was fun to think (and write) about.

FWIW, English isn't my first language either — so I hope we both learned something.

By the way, I couldn't find out why or how "boy" came to be used as an interjection — it doesn't readily appear to be a minced oath — like gosh — or a euphemism (like darn). It remains a mystery to me. So familiarity with these interjections doesn't mean there's nothing to discuss or explain :)

(I don't think I'm getting what the joke was even now, but that's beside the point)

Whenever you are about to say “boy”, say “sport” for immediate value add