donkey-boy

English

Alternative forms

donkey boy, donkeyboy

Etymology

From donkey +‎ boy.

Noun

donkey-boy (plural donkey-boys)

1. A person (usually, but not always, a boy) who cares for and drives a donkey that carries a tourist or the luggage of a tourist.
   • 1869, Howard Hopley, Under Egyptian Palms; or, Three Bachelors' Journeys On the Nile:

     He said, further, that, in the whole course of his experience, north and south, he had never fallen in with any to match the Cairo donkey-boys.

   • 1898, Arthur Conan Doyle, A Desert Drama:

     But the people upon the rock had no time to think of the cruel fate of the donkey-boys..

   • 2013, Douglas Sladen, Queer Things About Egypt:

     All our donkey-boys, except Joseph, seemed to be called Mohammed, and Joseph's name was not really Joseph—he had only adopted it for the convenience of English patrons.

Verb

donkey-boy (third-person singular simple present donkey-boys, present participle donkey-boying, simple past and past participle donkey-boyed)

1. (transitive, intransitive) To work as a donkey-boy (for)
   • 1907, Horace Gordon Hutchinson, Nature's Moods and Tenses, page 282:

     But no, she said, 'He be "donkey-boying" down on the sands at L—. Wonderful set on donkeys his mind has been ever since the time he was a boy; seems like they was fellow-beings for him.'

   • 1936, Charles Edwin Wilbour, Jean Capart, Travels in Egypt, page 378:

     A new Mohammed Hassan, who donkey-boyed me, told me Botros had ten thousand feddans and Aboo Stayt eight thousand, figures varying much from the old Md. Hassan's, three years ago.

   • 2013, Douglas Sladen, Queer Things About Egypt:

     Mohammed, when he was not donkey-boying, was the chief howling dervish of Luxor.