What does "donkey-boy" mean?

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.

Donkey-boy

noun, verb

noun, verb ·Rare ·Advanced level

Noun

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.
"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."

Verb

1
To work as a donkey-boy (for) ambitransitive
"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.'"

"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."

From donkey + boy.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.