boys will be boys
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
Boys are expected to be rambunctious and misbehave
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
It may be wondered whether the risk of harm outweighed the public policy behind horseplay — boys will be boys.
Boys will be boys and in spite of warnings at least one fatal accident occurred involving local lads, and several were injured.
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed on Wikipedia “List of proverbial phrases” (CC BY-SA 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-30; pending editor spot-check.
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Common questions
What does “boys will be boys” mean?
Boys are expected to be rambunctious and misbehave
Is “boys will be boys” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.
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