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.

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

   1898, Arthur Conan Doyle, A Desert Drama

   2 more examples

   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.

   1869, Howard Hopley, Under Egyptian Palms; or, Three Bachelors' Journeys On the Nile

   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.

   2013, Douglas Sladen, Queer Things About Egypt

present singular third person donkey-boys · participle present donkey-boying · participle past donkey-boyed · past donkey-boyed

1. ambitransitiveTo work as a donkey-boy (for)

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

   2013, Douglas Sladen, Queer Things About Egypt

   2 more examples

   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.'

   1907, Horace Gordon Hutchinson, Nature's Moods and Tenses, page 282

   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.

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