butcher boy

plural butcher boys

1. predominantly AustraliaA woodlouse, any of various terrestrial crustaceans of the suborder Oniscidea.

   Today I stood on a butcher boy. He died. I feel bad.

   2006 October 17, Rivetting, “Butcher Boy/Pill Bug/Rolly Polly”, in Have you been Rivetted?

   1 more example

   Common names for woodlice vary throughout the English-speaking world. They include roly-poly, pill bug (usually applied only to the genus Armadillidium), sow bug, […] butcher boy, daddy gramfer / daddy gampfer (West Country), Granny Grey (South Wales), cheesybug (Kent), and cheeselog.

   2018 June 25, “Pillbugs”, in Niles Biological, Inc., archived from the original on 21 Dec 2018

2. A man or boy who works for a butcher shop; a butcher's boy.

   Bob prick’d his lug and scratch’d his pate / For he was flushed with joy, / To think that he should be revenge’d / Upon the Butcher Boy.

   1839, Thomas Webber, Bob Malton and the Butcher Boy, page 6

   Synonyms: woodlouse, gigolo

3. euphemisticslanguncommonA male prostitute.

   He had clearly become a satyr once again, as evidenced by the rosy-faced butcher-boy that Moore met upon visiting him. The word butcher-boy was, like telegraph-boy, a euphemism for a male prostitute

   1997, Ellis Hanson, “The Dialectic of Shame and Grace”, in Decadence and Catholicism, →OCLC, page 81

   Synonyms: rent boy

4. USball gamesBatting at a pitch with a short swing from a bunt position; a slash bunt, a slug bunt.

   One of his [Casey Stengel's] more practical creations? The butcher boy, in which a batter would draw the infield in by squaring up to bunt ... only to quickly pull it back and take a short, downward swing at the ball.

   2016 June 14, “The origin stories behind 11 uniquely strange baseball terms”, in MLB.com, retrieved 26 Jun 2018